My Vegan Month (Repost)

Reposted from Belligerent Bliss

The vegetable side dish at Tokyo, Tokyo.

More than two years ago, I decided to turn pescetarian. At that point, I was already off beef and pork (I wasn’t really fond of either one), and staying away from the former especially helped with my hyperacidity. My friend Nana was also one (although she didn’t label herself as such), and it just seemed like a good idea, and a good challenge, to give up chicken and go full pesco.

I decided on starting it after my scheduled tonsillectomy late 2009, a few days before the New Year. I was going to be off solid food for two weeks after the operation anyway, and I thought the transition would be easier, and it was, since I was just dying to eat anything other than ice cream and yogurt. (It’s not as fun as it sounds. Try doing that for days and see how long you’d last.) Pescetarianism worked for me, for the most part, and it became a handy explanation (and ice breaker) for me whenever I’m asked why I don’t eat such-and-such dish. (Apparently, saying “just ‘cos” wasn’t an acceptable answer for most people.)

Crunchy Toasted Seaweed, I have learned to love thee.

But last year, I felt that I was becoming a little complacent with my diet. Yes, I had a lot of seafood and an ample amount of vegetables, but there was also a lot of junk going into my body. I remember reading an article wherein the author, a nutritionist, talked about diets and the categories people placed themselves in. “Don’t tell me what you are,” he wrote. “Tell me what you actually eat within the boundaries of what you say you are.” Sundaes, cupcakes, a lot of fried food—these were all technically acceptable under this lifestyle, but they weren’t necessarily good for me. And it wasn’t just about what I was eating, but how I was eating: bingeing before sleeping, skipping some meals and then turning into a glutton in others—I was a pesce-veg, but I don’t feel that I was eating healthy or choosing right.

I discovered places like Cafeteria Verde in Promenade, which served vegetarian, vegan and su vegetarian (a diet that excluded onions, shallots, etc) dishes. Pretty good.

Stef talked to me about her decision to turn vegan/pure vegetarian last year, and I thought it would be interesting to try it out for myself. I placed “turning vegan for a week” on my bucket list, but decided to extend it to a whole month (wala lang) and see at the end if I wanted to do it for the rest of my life.

Green Tea Frap with soy milk. It's really not the same.

It was really hard, especially at the beginning. Since our bodies process vegetables quickly, I was hungry for most of the day. And since it is very restrictive, buying food became a lot more complicated process. I was reduced to circling convenience store and supermarket aisles checking ingredient lists and investigating on how a certain dish was cooked. Breakfast became a bit depressing as I couldn’t have any eggs, bangus, or bagels, so I had pan de sal most mornings (the ones at Pan De Manila are made with no eggs or dairy). After volleyball dinners became sad affairs, gastronomy-wise, and I became increasingly embarrassed and conscious about how I was torturing myself in front of other people; I felt that people thought of me as pretentious.

But there are a lot of days when I felt really good about it. Basically, when I get to try something new. I shopped at Korean stores (crunchy toasted seaweed FTW), had the light and green bowl at Mongolian Quick Stop every other day, had soy latte now and then and befriended the people who sold spicy tofu at the food court downstairs.

In that sense and in a weird way, setting those restrictions allowed me to explore and try out other possibilities. I’m not a particularly adventurous person and, before my vegexperiment, my opinion about tokwa and veggie meat, (actually tofu in general) wasn’t particularly high. This kept things interesting.

How I've missed you, old fried friend.

At some point during the month, however, I realized that it wasn’t for me. That I still miss dairy and eggs, fish and shellfish and all those things I enjoyed. So much so, I decided to even give up pescetarianism and start eating chicken again. I know that it’s such fat kid thing to say, but, KFC makes me happy, Wendy’s chicken breast fillet makes me happy. And I’m at that age when I know that there really is no real reason to deprive myself of something that makes me happy, as long as it’s in moderation.

Sabi ko nga eh, “Life is short. Eat the damn cupcake.”

Can I smell that? Please?

Things I learned from two weeks on the South Beach Diet:

- You'd think that being on Master Cleanser will make this one like a breeze in the park, right? But sadly: Whiny McWhine-Whine, the comeback. 

- Also: Mr. Can-I-please-smell-your-food, Part Deux

- If you go by how the amount of food I can't eat being offered to me has tripled, you ca conclude that someone somewhere out there is mocking me.

- Being next to Food and Foodie magazines, and their constant barrage of freebies is quite the pain in the ass. 

- A microwave—both the lack of and too close of an affinity to—is enough of a spark for corporate divisional tension.

- What doesn't help: watching that show with that woman who kinda looks like Natalie Portman on the Food Network.

- Speaking of lacking a microwave: you know what isn't fun? Eating cold adobong pusit.

- Saving will only be possible if you friggin' don't ride taxis all the time just because you're feeling sluggish.

- You can get sick of the following quite easily: peanuts, cashew nuts, omelets, sugar-free jello and pudding, lentils, curry and coffee with asperthame. 

- I should've had a sign that said, "I can't eat that (le sob)." Emphasis on the "le sob."

- What doesn't help: squealing like a girl at the sight of cookies. 

- You know what else is sad: event buffets. There's like a Chanandeler Bing-Lesbian wedding metaphor in there somewhere.

- You know you're a tennis addict when you're barely able to make it through the day upright, and you suddenly find yourself playing three rounds of doubles on a Saturday morning. 

- When you start mentally listing (and at times actually listing on paper) down the things you are going gorge on after this diet, the future doesn't look too bright for you. (Red velvet cake in da haws!)

- What doesn't help: effing smelling other people's food at random. 

- What was all that anguish and abuse worth in the end? About 13 pounds. And an aggressive form of nut phobia.

*Reposted from Belligerent Bliss

Everybody

"Food is our common ground, a universal experience."

- James Beard

Healthy Cooking

I actually attended a cooking lesson last weekend at The Farm in San Benito. This was for their restaurant called Alive! Most of the food served is raw, there are some dishes (minimal) that are cooked over 40 degrees C. I guess that takes getting used to since I'm so used to hot food (temperature and taste wise).
The chef who had a hard time articulating what he was doing (he had the F and the P syndrome) made up for it with his energy and smile. He obviously loved what he was doing (as a cook) but not necessarily as someone who had to explain what he did.
We watched him make cheese, out of macadamia nuts, miso, rock salt and nutritional yeast as well as pesto (which was delicious) I am a big fan of pesto and if I were to go vegetarian I would probably have this everyday.


We were served the cheese and pesto with crackers that are actually made on The Farm using young coconut. The taste was pleasant and the texture was still crunchy. It was quite amazing. I would recommend that everyone try and have some time out in The Farm to enjoy this wonderful and very nutritional way or enjoying more enzymes in their dishes. And if you like to cook, you may want to add some of their recipes into your home's menu for everyone's benefit.

Why I can't be a vegetarian

Not that I haven't considered it. I have, in fact, gone through several phases of pseudo-vegetarianism, the most recent after having read Jonathan Safran Foer's Eating Animals, which made you want to be on the right side of the ethical food divide. The book details the evils of factory farming and the massive destruction being wrought on the environment just because we like our meat. It will also make you feel guilty for discriminating between animals. Why is it OK to grow and torture chickens and pigs but not a dog or a cat? Plus, a vegetarian diet has never harmed anyone, unlike the artery-clogging (but oh so delicious) fat marbling down a fine cut of cow.

But my resolve always goes out the window when I visit a country like Spain or Argentina, where they revere their meats, treating their cattle with love, letting them graze freely on the grassy pampas, not an ounce of hormones injected into them. They love their pigs, and consider their killing a beautiful sacrifice for the table community of men. It's almost not hard to imagine the animals, if they had a humanlike conscience, to be willingly led to slaughter after having a good, albeit brief life on earth.

That and learning that vegetable farming is also quite destructive to the environment. Essential forests and mangroves have been cleared to make way for potatoes and cabbages and ecologically-unsound monocultures and GMOs. There is no easy answer. Even if you try to go all organic, how do you really know you're eating the best possible thing?

And the last reason why I can't be a vegetarian: if one were to follow the blood type diet, my O type requires that I consume meat and not grains. My blood is build for consuming blood. If you believe that kind of thing.

I like meat, and I love vegetables. I try to eat more of the latter, and eat the former only if it's really good and ideally "happy" (like this wonderful chorizo and steak from a parilla in Buenos Aires). Until someone gives me a foolproof argument for drastically changing my diet, I can't reconcile the contradictory issues and can only just eat as healthily and responsibly as I can.

A buffet blast—and more B words

A couple of months back, my quiz night team, The (S)trippers, got invited to a trivia event in Cebu for their first anniversary. Jim, one of my teammates, brought up the idea of going straight to Bohol (his family has a beach house in Panglao) the day after so we could all make a long weekend trip out of it.

So, the morning after our not-so-crushing defeat (more on that here) at the Manila-Cebu, we made our way to Bohol via the Weesam Line. It was my first time in Bohol and I thoroughly enjoyed the experience though I didn't get to see some of the more tourist-y places (Chocolate Hills and, well, Chocolate Hills...) because our afternoons got rained out. 

One of the highlights of the trip for me (especially where this blog is concerned) was dinner on our last night. We were deciding between the Loboc River Cruise or the Bohol Bee Farm, both cost about the same. Most of us aren't into cruises, so we finally opted for the latter despite its rather sorry-looking mascot-logo (he needs to pluck). 

The Buffet is Pescetarian-friendly—really good salads and fish dishes like the Grilled Blue Marlin.

We stopped by after lunch to reserve a table for the night. The place was filled with locals, most of whom congregated around the Ice Cream shop just outside of the lobby. It offered unusual flavors such as Malunggay and Spicy Ginger (our friend Phil strongly advised us against that one particularly) and less interesting ones like Chocolate and Avocado. I had the Durian. (It had the consistency and taste of dirty ice cream, which isn't necessarily a bad thing.)

And so we went around where we could around the island—a tarsier center, Baclayon church (I KNOW) and the Hinagdanan Cave (where we met the most photo-savvy manong in the history of forever)—and found ourselves headed back to the Bee Farm for an early dinner. Given the relentless downpour, it was a good thing that we decided to go here instead of the cruise.

The place has a very laidback feel to it and great for groups of people.

One of my favorites from the buffer was this Seafood Lasagna dish.

After settling down to our places, I scanned through the menu. Since I'm a pescetarian, I went straight to the seafood section and decided on the Blue Marlin. But Kaia pointed out the buffet option to me. For about P600 (give or take, it goes down depending on the amount of people in your group), you get several dishes (salad, soup, grilled pork, chicken, Blue Marlin cutlets) plus unlimited drinks (if you opt for lemongrass) and a round of ice cream. 

The food came soon after we ordered (maybe the buffet option is so popular that they just cook in bulk?) and we happily stuffed ourselves. I love that this buffet is so pesce-friendly, what with the fish (cooked excellently BTW), seafood lasagna and a whole lot of vegetables. That is what I find sorely lacking in many places in Manila.

All in all, it was a pretty sweet meal. I'll be happy to come back to Bohol just to enjoy this gastronomic experience again.

Mini yummies

I attended a baby shower yesterday and in theme with "baby" all the food was served in miniature proportions. It's comforting to know that you can still get a lot of taste from tinier tidbits.

We were served a fruit shake (for authenticity they were mixed and mashed in a baby food processor) and we drank them out of little bottles:
The shakes were a very refreshing combination of watermelon, apples and a little ice. If we were feeling a little less "wholesome" we probably would have added some vodka. Perhaps after our guest of honor gives birth-we could that to celebrate :-)
Next were very yummy taquitos, bite sized and perfect with their spicy salsa:
Nothing is complete, small or big idea or theme without dessert. One of the hosts made a lovely spread of mini cupcakes and tiny red delicious apples (both unhealthy and healthy options) for the guests. The cupcakes were red velvet and vanilla (from Classic Confections) while the other tiny treats were from Dulcinea such as cream puffs and profiteroles.
A lovely detail was also done by the guest of honor's sister who is a production designer by profession. With the request for all gifts to be reading material, in fact the invitation had a very clever tagline of "bookmark the date" the guests were asked to give something they would like the baby to read or be read to.

So, keeping that in mind, she placed little flags on each cupcake representing some childhood classics. In taste and presentation, I can honestly say that great things come in little packages. May you all have a Sunday full of small surprises :-)