Day 14: Doing Great

I'm still chugging along just great. The cheese-lust has subsided a bit.

I have fallen back into the trap of eating a diet heavy in bread though. I need to remember to start with raw fruits and vegetables first. Yesteday I had an open-faced avocado and cashew cheese sandwich with sprouts and tomato. It was so good, but I probably didn't need quite that much fat even though those are the so-called "good fats" in nuts and avocado.

I read through Vegan With a Vengeance yesterday and got inspired by the tempting recipes. She believes in desserts, bless her, and they look really, really good. I'm also looking forward to making my own seitan at some point. I bet if I simmer that in fake chicken broth it'll taste "just like chicken." heh

Another recipe that immediately caught my eye was for the vegan Pad Thai. Oh yeah. THAT looked good. So did the Thai Green Curry. We have a few Thai restaurants here, though I don't know how vegan-friendly they are.

My favorite local restaurant is Tokyo-Seoul, a Korean/Japanese place. Even though one of  my favorite dishes, Tol Sot Bi-Bim-Bap (stone bowl bi-bim-bap) does come in a vegetarian version substituting tofu for the meat, I know that there aren't a lot of vegan dishes there. Very often even the tofu and rice cake dishes use some meat product. Some of the soups use a beef broth as the base, plus there are anchovies lurking everywhere. I think that even many of the kimchees and other vegetable side dishes use anchovies or anchovy paste.

I recall that when I was in Korea, the vegetarians on our teaching staff complained that it was very difficult for them to find anything that was meat-free. Ironically, the best vegan food I've ever had in my life was in Seoul at a place run by Buddhist monks. The Sanchon Temple is in In-sa Dong, a very arty district in Seoul. There you're served traditional vegetarian dishes by the monks and can watch performances.

Oh now I am craving kimchee-fried rice, one of the ultimates in Koren comfort food.  :)