Vegan For A Day

Actually it was a little more than a day. It was 27 hours. I made the commitment to "go vegan" on Saturday afternoon. Just after sneaking a few of Kellan's cheese fries off her plate at lunch. I had read a bit recently about -- getting healthy, not eating meat, how bad milk is for you... And so I decided the best thing for me would be Vegan.

As usual, I didn't really investigate the details but I knew the basics. So I bought some fake cheese and decided I felt healthier already.

Battle fig I thought could work, certainly I can find some vegan recipes for figs. So I invited my friend Elise (vegetarian - not as committed as me - VEGAN) to come over for a little tasting, a few practice dishes.

"Hmmm, this looks good, but without the prosciutto and goat cheese, not so much."

"Oh, here's one where I can use my fake cheese, YES!"

Here is a lovely salad, I can skip the blue cheese, they don't make fake blue cheese"

But I thought, what about all of my NON-VEGAN friends, and family. I am going to have to make a few variations. I can't expect them to be as health-concious as me.

I made a few vegan friendly dishes. Kalmata olive and fig chutney on toast squares (that was better with prociutto and goat cheese, or so I am told), a melon, fig and arugula salad, without the big wedge of blue cheese that it needed. And a couple of pizzas:

Carmelized onion and fig pizza with fake cheese and rosemary
Real cheese pizza with prosciutto
Fig and kalmata olive pizza with real cheese
and one for the kids...real cheese pizza (that's all)

I ate the fake cheese pizza. I did. It was good. And then I tried the prosciutto pizza with real cheese...27 hours...