Since I wrote about my plan to leave sugar, gluten, and animal products out of my diet for the month of April (at least), I’ve found that I have to explain what exactly it is that I eat. Again. Make no mistake, I get that it’s confusing to be my friends or family members, since I change my diet more frequently than the average person. My friend Tish would say I’m like a fart in a skillet, with which I might agree.
I would like to take this moment to point out, though, that I’ve been vegan or vegetarian for more of my adult life than I haven’t. I remember the struggle of being vegetarian at Ball State University in the early 1990s when the best choice I had for lunch was a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and for dinner the lovely and magical vegetable tetrazzini that looked (and tasted) like chunky wallpaper paste. In their defense, there were some brownish peas and carrots, likely once frozen, in that tetrazzini. I lived the vegetarian struggle. Looking back I can even chuckle that the jello cup was a vegetarian selection.
Let’s discuss when I became vegan a few years later in the thriving metropolis Muncie, IN. I looked high and low for a single veggie burger, block of tofu, carton of soy milk, or container of nutritional yeast. Most weeks I’d drive all the way to Broadripple to the health food store to find some of the ingredients mentioned in my “Vegetarian Times” magazine.
(Sidenote: I have to give my parents, and I guess my little brother, some kudos here, because, even though it was weird to have a vegan in the family in the 90s in Indiana, they were very supportive. My mom even makes some amazing vegan oatmeal, banana, raisin, walnut cookies. I mean those things are AMAZING.)
At that point in my life, I wasn’t sure which caused my mail carrier more consternation, my subscription to “Vegetarian Times” or the monthly delivery of the several LGBT+ magazines to which I also subscribed. I only wondered this because the couple of times I met her at the mailbox, the mail carrier would say something like, “Interesting magazines you read,” or “You got a couple new issues today”, but I could never tell for sure if she was bothered by their content, or if that was some sort of awkward Midwestern lesbian pick-up line. As most anyone can tell you, I am really bad at reading those sorts of signs.
But I digress. What do I even eat?
Today I started the day non-vegan because whenever I try to change my diet, I finish off the food leftover from whatever I was eating before. Something I hate more than itching, inflammation, and super fatness is wasting food, so I make a point of trying not to waste. I also have an intense phobia of mold, so sometimes things do get wasted, but I try.
This morning for breakfast, I ate two vegetarian corndogs, and I will have the last two for lunch tomorrow. I also had an Americano with some soy milk, but how exciting is a picture of any coffee drink in a paper cup? Now if I’d had an my drink in a glass or even a ceramic mug, I’d have taken a picture, because Americanos are some sexy coffee when they’re made right.
For lunch, I had a sofritas bowl from Chipotle. It had brown rice, black beans, grilled vegetables, sofritas, pico de gallo, corn salsa, spicy salsa, guacamole, and lettuce. This photo isn’t mine (I got it from here), but mine looked just like this, and it tasted super yummy!
For dinner I had a smoothie with some frozen berries, plain almond butter, and unsweetened almond milk. Again, this is not my photo (I borrowed it from Silk), but mine was delicious, tasting a bit like an almond butter and jelly sandwich. A bit.
Basically, I ate everything delicious today, and I will continue to eat everything delicious for the month of April.
Reason Breeds Insanity 
