new day, new cheese, new life

March 18^th, 2012

Hooray! I’m home from FL and back with my family! This plant based diet gets more fun all the time – we went to Whole Foods today after church, and while Jen shopped, the kids and I got some lunch. The kids wanted pizza, and were angling for some pepperoni or sausage, but I ordered a plain cheese pizza for them; I just felt like it would be lame to let them eat organ meats while Jen and I abstain from ALL meat. While we were waiting for the pizza to be ready, I notice that in the section of pizza for sale by the slice, they had a ‘Vegan Pizza of the Day.’ It had a bunch of veggies on top, and something that certainly looked like cheese. The guy behind the counter said it was non-dairy cheese made from tofu, and informed me that it was really bland and rubbery. Despite the non-sales pitch, I ordered a slice. When we sat down to eat it was easy to notice that the kids’ cheese pizza was very limp and drooping over their hands, while my vegan pizza had a perfectly stiff crust. It had more of a crunch than I am used to, and the ‘cheese’ did not have the same taste and texture as mozzarella, but it was very satisfying! The kids’ cheese pizza looked good to me still, but I didn’t so much as nibble a little of the saucy cheese out of the bottom of the box. Normally, I would have been jealous if the kids were having pizza and I wasn’t, but I experienced none of that emotion today – victory!

Many fun things were in the grocery sacks when we got home – cereals with 10 grams of fiber per serving (I do need more fiber, it’s been really bothering me that I evidently have not been eating enough of it), a sack of nutritional yeast (oh yeah, it’s a party in a bag), a big ol’ Portobello mushroom (because my wife loves me like that), two textures of tofu, and many other lovely things. It is FANTASTIC to have food that is so tasty and so fun, but without all the gunk! I mean, that monster mushroom makes me giddy like I would have been at the prospect of bacon wrapped meatballs.

If you’re wondering what any of this strange stuff like tofu, nutritional yeast, non-dairy cheese, etc tastes like, I’m here to tell you; it tastes like freedom.