How are we doing this? What are we eating? There are a lot of things we cannot get here, that makes this change a little difficult, but we have improvised some and have gotten people to bring us some things.
- Breakfast: sometimes whole grain oats, or rolled oats, , but always oatmeal (except on 'special breakfast Saturdays') and always with: ground flax seed, prunes, wheat germ, and applesauce (sometimes cinnamon)
- For whole grains: we bought some in Thailand: whole wheat flour, whole grain pasta, brown rice, etc. Locally we can get whole grain oats, and purple rice which is a good substitute for plain white rice, if you have no other option (our helper's family grows purple rice). We can actually now get whole wheat bread here but I am not sure what is in it, I need to ask, we eat sandwiches once a week on our family picnic, so if there is an egg in the bread, no worries.
- For healthy additives: we put ground flax seed (from the US), and wheat germ (from US) in a lot of things, breakfast, smoothies, etc. The Coker's just brought us some Bran as well which we will incorporate.
- Beans: we can get some beans locally, mainly of the soy variety. We bought black beans, chickpeas, lentils and others while in Thailand.
- Vegetables and fruit: this is the staple of our diet and our wet market has no lack of variety, and SO cheap!
- Vitamins: we do take a multi vitamin, and Sophia definitely does. Right now I am keeping Sophia on vegetarian diet, because in general she does not eat enough of the other to get all the nutrients she needs, this is simply because she is a child, as she gets older we hope to incorporate less animal based protein. As of now she really does not drink milk much (maybe 2-3x/week), but eats yogurt as a daily snack and will eat eggs every now and then. Her vitamin is one that contains iron.
- Our snacks: fruit and nuts, and smoothies, usually green ones (spinach), though sometimes we incorporate the smoothie as part of a meal. We probably drink a green smoothie a day using whichever fruit is local in season, right now it is strawberries, but soon we will have pineapple and mango. I also just made a yummy protein bar, recipe will be posted soon.
- Coke Zero: well, we all have our vices. I drink a half a can of coke zero about every other day (if that), not ashamed of it really. David has gone to drinking green tea in the morning and one Coke Zero in the afternoon. Moderation, my friends. Do what you can do.
We have menu planned the month of March with a bunch of new recipes we found in Eat For Health and Thrive (David loved this book and if he ever guests posts he could review it), and some from the Internet. I improvise a lot on recipes when I know we can't get something. For example for 'yellow squash' I may add more zucchini or another kind of squash if I find it.
To be honest a lot of times I just substitute tofu for meat in spaghetti sauce and omit cheese and add sides of various vegetables. Our helper makes a really good pineapple beef dish, so we substituted tofu, changes the taste some, but not too much. And the best news is that we just asked our dumpling place to make vegan dumplings. A typical dumpling has pork, egg, garlic, green veg, and other seasonings in it. We will see what the new ones taste like this week, he will use mushrooms, omit the meat, and use tofu for the egg. If it is gross we may just opt for meatless and continue this as one of our local favorites.
We are just starting out with this thing, so I don't know much, learning as I go really. But I do know we are not hungry like I thought I would be after a meatless meal and I eat just as many snacks as I did eating meat. And certainly, sometimes I try a recipe and we eat it but say, 'never again,' and I cross it off my list, to other recipes we say, 'wow, we can really do this whole vegan thing.'
Almost done with these posts, I promise, next will be a resource list, books and websites I use to help me along in Vegetarian/veganhood meal planning.
