I, an avid meat and ice cream-eater, have been eating vegan for the past week as a George Plimpton-esque adventure. Now, on my last day, I am literally counting down the hours until I am reunited with meat and dairy products again.

Breakfast: Instant oatmeal.

Lunch: I go with my family to Coast, the beach-side restaurant in the Shutter’s Hotel in Santa Monica. I look the menu over again and again, dreaming about all the food that I can’t eat. I want to order spaghetti until someone points out that a lot of spaghetti is made with eggs, which the waitress confirms. The waitress tells me that the only vegan item on the menu is a Portobello mushroom steak with barley rice. “Steak” is a major exaggeration – it is just a small, thin slice of Portobello – but the dish as a whole is delicious. Read More »

Welcome to day five of my week eating entirely vegan.

No joke, this morning I woke up in a panic because I thought I’d eaten a ham and cheese sandwich last night. I’m not sure if this is because the rules of vegan eating are so strict you can break them on accident, or if I was just really craving a ham and cheese sandwich.

Breakfast: Trusty ol’ venti soy latte from Starbucks. The server looked like Christian Bale. Suddenly I’m very happy to be eating (and drinking!) vegan this week.

Lunch: Beer!! I go with a friend to the On the Waterfront Café on the Venice Boardwalk, an outdoor beer garden, and I enjoy a tall glass of brew. Some beers and wines are made with some fish product called isinglass, but I read online that German beers are vegan-friendly, so I order a German beer. This is by far the best vegan meal I’ve had in a while.

Dinner: I end up at Real Food Daily, again. I am now completely addicted to their Supreme Burrito. I highly recommend it. My friend gets a club sandwich. He is a huge meat eater and hates health food, but even he admitted that it wasn’t bad.

Does anyone know of any other vegan restaurants in Los Angeles that I should try? Or some vegan friendly products?

[image from veganvice.blogspot.com]

Hello all, welcome to day 4 of my week-long vegan eating extravaganza.

I can honestly say that I’m getting used to eating vegan, although I did wake up in a cold panic last night thinking I’d accidentally had nonfat milk instead of soy milk in my morning coffee yesterday, so maybe I take that back…

Breakfast: Breakfast is definitely the hardest meal for a vegan. I think cereal with soy milk is an acquired taste (or maybe just always gross), and as I found out yesterday, scrambled tofu is just plain nasty. I looked up some vegan recipes online, but everything requires baking. You can make versions of muffins, waffles, pancakes, etc, but who has time for this when running out of the house in the morning? Today, I have oatmeal and a Starbucks soy latte for breakfast… again.

Lunch: Nothing. Nothing. Read More »