Vegan bachelorette food!

I wanted something substantial and filling for lunch today - I plan to go for a long hike later today and would rather not be carrying a huge sack of food to feed my snackity-snack-ness so here's what I came up with to use up two small 9-grain buns that I've had in the fridge for (at least) two weeks:

so it doesn't look amazing (could use some green - maybe spinach or other salad leaves), but it tastes pretty darned good for 5 min of prep! There's the two 9-grain buns (too small to make a sandwich out of) that I steamed in the microwave by putting a wet towel over them (they were wayyy  hard from being in the fridge for a while) and then cut up into cubes, 1 Wildwood Sprouted Tofu Veggie Patty (sooo good!), an heirloom tomato from the farmer's market, and a large few tablespoons of homemade pickled mangoes (my dad made it and sent it to me!).  Mmmmm! You can also see my two beverages up there in the corner - freshly brewed and iced white+green tea, and a matcha soy shake from the Toofu stand at the farmer's market.  Quick, tasty, uses up stuff that might have gone bad...perfect :)

It starts...

So, the thought of a vegetarian/vegan blog has been brewing in me - lots of thoughts and no place to put them...so here goes!

Let's get some of the boring intro stuff about of the way: Growing up, I was raised pretty much vegetarian-at-home (twice a summer or so we'd have fish sticks and that was it for anything). When I was going to later elementary school I started eating what was there in a lunchroom - chicken mostly, and very occasionally beef. In high school, I went vegetarian again for a few years, then back to chicken, then back to veg, and so on all through college (a few years on, a year-ish off). It's not that I changed my opinion that it was wrong to eat animals (an idea explained to me by my dad from a young age) - it's just that...well, I'm short...and I had heard that there were tons of hormones in meat and that's why so many American girls were so tall and I wanted to be tall like that. I know, I know - probably one of the worst reasons to eat meat! Still, I tried hard to convince myself that I wasn't really eating dead animals; I'd pick meals that had unrecognizable chunks in it (no bones, and nugget or cube shaped) and fantasized that animals hadn't been killed for food in years, that one day there'd be a huge expose' detailing how the meat industry was really just repackaging tofu. I was in denial, in a bad way.

Now, I am fairly certain I could never waffle back and pretend that I just don't know - I've done a lot more reading up and I just know too much and care too much to eat an animal. Additionally, I'm in my mid-twenties and I've been vegan for about 6 months. It's my second go at veganism - the first time only lasted a month and failed for many reasons - it wasn't the right time in my life, and I didn't have the right situation in place.

Well, enough about me :)  Next post will hopefully be more interesting :D