Monday, April 9, 2012

My First Day as a Vegan

Let me first say that this is my 100th post. I will let you all congratulate me whenever you so please. I intended for the main focus of this blog post to be in regards to my newly adopted vegan diet and how it went on day one, but some things happened at the wildlife refuge while I was volunteering that I just cannot deprive you from hearing about.

Today it was relatively busy and I decided not to wear my watch (seeing as how when I do I simply stare at it and watch four hours pass at snail-moving-through-molasses speed), so it went by fairly quickly. I also was the fortunate volunteer selected to feed the three baby foxes. Baby squirrels are a dime a dozen to me and become far less cute the more they urinate and poop all over my jeans, and full-grown animals just hiss/claw/bark/roar at me, but baby foxes are a different story. These little guys were playful like puppies and did not want to kill me so it was a wonderful experience.

However, the things that happened post fox feeding were grotesque to say the least. First of all, I got bitten by a baby squirrel. In my eyes, this particular creature is on the verge of not being considered a baby anymore- most likely the main contributer to her anger with me. She bit me and broke the skin, so I had to report the incident only to be informed that I was the first animal bite recorded all year. Yipee. I did not think it was a huge deal, but then I was alerted to the fact that rabies is not out of the realm of possibility, so I should carefully monitor it for the next week. I guess if I start foaming at the mouth, we all know why. This is not even close to the bad part of the day. My friend Liz and I were putting something away in the refrigerator and noticed a lovely container full of rabbit heads resting in a rather substantial pool of blood. Even years of watching Dexter could not prepare me for that sight. I thought I was going to pass out on the spot, and adding to the horrific situation was the fact that the heads were rotting and giving off a stench that I cannot even begin to describe. Better yet, a staff member walked by and saw the heads and mentioned that it would probably be best if we disposed of the heads. Oh. Dear. God. Please. No! We dumped the heads in a trash bag and I took them to the dumpster, leaving poor dear Liz to clean the blood-filled container. I have never been so horrified- I tried to chuck the whole bag into the dumpster but of course I dropped it and had to grab it by the other end to get it into the trash. Even thinking about it is making me nauseus all over again. I know you all loved that story.

Okay, ready for the vegan status report? The answer better be yes, because it is comng your way.

Breakfast: Liz and I decided to try out a restaurant called Crane Hollow which we drive past on the way to volunteer. It is a cute little place located in Hygiene. Let me just say that being vegan there made it easy to order, since there was only one thing I could have on the menu- the veggie scramble with tofu. Not bad with Cholula on top.
Lunch: I made myself a vegan smoothie. I have this stuff called VegaOne which is a flavored nutritional powder like a protein shake which I added to 1 cup almond milk, 1 banana and ice to create a flavorful smoothie.
Dinner: my mom and I went to Carrabba's. Another easy one, because once again there is only one vegan-friendly menu item. Thankfully, there is a website which lists all major restaurants and their vegan meal offerings, which is what I used to discover that the tag pic pac pasta is vegan. I had to ask the waiter, and he said they would have to substitute egg-free noodles, but it all worked out well. And it tasted great.


Tomorrow I am going to try my hand at some vegan home cookin'! I think that one of the main challenges of all this is that I cannot take any supplements with gelatin coating, nor can I take fish oil. What a drag!

So there you have it. I cannot say that I am experiencing any sort of changes mentally or physically yet, but it has only been one day. So maybe tomorrow the mad burst of energy will kick in and I will want to run a marathon. Who knows? Just as long as I never have to dispose of rotting rabbit heads covered in smelly blood, I can handle anything.

I spent part of my morning with three of these!

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