The Mad Dad Went Vegan (Temporarily)

Day 1 - Thursday

Being vegan is going to be a lot easier than I thought and I’m excited to start cooking. I’m going out of my way to use some ingredients that I don’t normally use along with using some familiar ingredients in new ways. I love to cook, but my cooking skills are limited so this will be educational.

Well, I already fucked up. The “V” at noodles does not stand for vegan just like the D at the end of my last name doesn’t stand for dumbass. Pesto has a shit ton of delicious parmesan cheese in it. That’s why pesto is amazing. But pesto is made from the suffering of hundreds if not thousands of animals… probably goats or seals or something. No more fucking pesto.

I was vegan for all of 3 hours.

Day 2 - Friday

Ok, so today I woke up vegan. After the pesto incident, I think I’ve got this shit on lock. Skipping breakfast is a solid vegan move. You can’t destroy your vegan ways if you don’t eat. I’m getting pretty hungry though… Shit. Noodles kinda fucked me so no more “V” dishes from there. I guess I’ll go home and cook something.

So I’m a pretty decent cook. I’m also told that I take good food pictures. Thanks! Food bloggers can suck it. Their job is easy. I made an original recipe miso noodle soup. It was pretty decent. I didn’t have the right kind of seaweed so I’ll have to order some online. Vegan ingredients are weird. Also tofu is weird. I can’t say that I’m a fan, but probably because I’m not cooking it right.

Oh, and I almost forgot that I made a balling white bean hummus from the Thug Kitchen cookbook.

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Off to a pretty solid vegan start!

Day 3 – Saturday

No kids this weekend. I can cook the whole time and be so fucking vegan. I made the chickpea wraps last night and they were really good if not a little weird texturally speaking. The recipe also made a fuck ton of food. I’m just going to drink my vegan bourbon and eat leftovers today. Fuck cooking. Wooo!

Veganism is cake. Actually cake is cake and cake is not vegan. Vegan is… I dunno. Fucking carrots or something.

Day 4 – The Lord’s Day

Great lazy day today so I decided to cook the Thug Kitchen Pad Thai. So here’s what I didn’t know about Pad Thai: it uses a fish sauce based sauce for the noodles. Fish sauce is not vegan (no shit, right?) so Thug Kitchen is making substitutions in an effort to match the flavor using vegan ingredients. I generally stay away from trying to make things taste like things that it's not, bit this wasn’t half bad. It wasn’t the pad thai that I love, but it was a decent stir fry recipe. Oh, but there is one problem. I tried tamari sauce as a soy sauce substitute because I’m trying new ingredients, remember? Well, as it turns out, I fucking HATE tamari sauce. I don’t throw ANYTHING away. Nothing. I live my life as if I grew up during the Depression, but I poured that shit right down the drain. Now my sink smells like the disappointment of thousands of Asian grandmothers and fucking tamari sauce. I’m looking forward to trying the dish again with regular soy sauce.

Day 5 – Monday

Fuck… I really want some god damn bacon. Or steak. Or fried chicken. Sigh…

I REALLY want some meat. God damnit. It’s good, though. I got this. I can be a good vegan. I have plenty of leftovers today and I’m going to cook the lentil tacos for dinner. Surprisingly enough, the Thug Kitchen Lentil Tacos were on point.

They were much better than I expected. As with all their recipes, I’d change a few things to suit my tastes better, but I was impressed. There's this thing about lentils, though. They're not meat. They will never be meat. God damn veganism. Why am I doing this?

Edit: So I made it 9 full days. I broke down on Thanksgiving with the family. Not AT thanksgiving, but I was stuck in the car for several hours with starving boys and I neded up eating a chicken nugget that was thrown in my direction. It was the best airborne chicken I've ever had. Since then I stopped the vegan nonsense entirely, but I've been taking elements of some of the vegan cooking and using it to make some food that is much healthier and more diverse. After all, that was really the whole point.