month of vegan - day 4

I think we've fallen into our old breakfast routine: toast and tea, followed by a mad scramble to ride to the gym with enough time to have a proper workout. Apart from Saturday mornings, we didn't really eat meat or eggs, so there wasn't going to be much change. I'd thought we'd be having scrambled tofu or fruit platters by now, but there just isn't enough time (unless one of us gets up at 5.30am, and that is never going to happen).

I couldn't do four days of soy coffee in a row, so popped down to the local Boost for my morning pick-me-up. My internals are definitely rearranging themselves around the new diet. Food (especially juice apparently) doesn't spend a long time inside my body any more. I guess it doesn't take as long to break it all down, strip out the nutrients and get rid of what's left. I actually feel much better during the day; I don't get lethargic after a big meal and I don't have to suck in my stomach as much.

For lunch, I went to a Korean restaurant in the city and had Japchae. It's pretty much just veges and noodles, with a soy and sesame sauce. Really tasty, I'll have to try making this at home.

Deb went out for dinner with "the girls" tonight. They went to our local Thai place, who don't seem to make anything that doesn't have fish sauce or shrimp paste in it. She had the usual green curry, but with vegetables instead of chicken. As long as she feels guilty about the fish sauce, I think it's ok :)

While she was out, I made a Korean style bibimbap, which is essentially a bunch of sautéed veges on top of a bed of rice. What makes it awesome is the chili paste I was introduced to recently. It's called gochujang, and is chilli, glutinous rice and fermented soy beans that have been left lying around for a year or so. It's not like normal chilli sauce that keeps getting hotter the more you eat. It heats up to a certain point, but kind of plateaus after that, so you don't end up with a burnt tongue at the end of the meal. Highly recommended.


I also had a bottle of wine, which may, or may not have used egg whites for fining. It's really difficult to know which producers use animal products, because it's not regulated (they aren't obliged to tell you one way or the other). We've decided to do our best, but not be obsessive about it. I'm not about to cut our options down that much.