Mmmm, Forbidden Muffin
There are times, as a chunky vegan, you feel as if you might be letting the side down a bit with your extra volume. I mean, granted that veganism is not (for me) about health per se but about being healthy while minimizing the cruelty involved in your maintenance; granted also that switching to entirely plant-based foods had the unintended but welcome side effect of shedding, and keeping off, quite a fair amount of weight. That being said, though my weight has been pretty stable for about a year without any real effort on my part, I could certainly stand to pare it down a bit more. Well, more than a bit, strictly speaking. We won’t go into numbers, exactly.
I’ve been sort of half-heartedly trying to follow the Eat to Live plan the past couple of weeks, a process made more difficult by the fact that the copy of the book I ordered hasn’t yet arrived. As I understand it, though, the basic idea is to eat lots of vegetables (both raw and cooked), fruit, beans, and modest amounts of flaxseed, raw nuts, tofu, and, presumably, seitan; starches and other comparatively “low nutritional bang for your caloric buck” foods are restricted. (As I said, I don’t have the book yet, and my understanding comes only from one lunchtime browse of Sarah’s copy. If I’m wrong, please be gentle with your corrections.) It’s definitely vegan-friendly, so I thought I’d give it a shot.
Anything that really limits starches is a bit of a problem for me, though. I love veg, fruit, beans, and whatnot, but if I can’t have a big scoop of quinoa or kasha, or a round of whole-wheat pita bread, I will lose what little grip I have on sanity.
I was doing pretty well today, actually — orange for breakfast, lunch of pinto beans and broccoli with a little corn thrown in (and dressed with a limited-oil version of Mo Kelly’s Salad Dressing from The Garden of Vegan), tofu and roasted eggplant and zucchini for dinner. Then, catastrophe: I broke down and made corn-and-basil muffins.
And they were good. [Insert demonic laughter here.]
When the book finally arrives, I’ll give it a more thorough read and find out whether it’s something I really can adapt to, or if I’ll go crazy without access to pita. We’ll see; I’m a lifelong pita addict, so it might be tough.
