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My vegan week isn’t due to some sudden desire to save animals that would otherwise end up on the tip of my fork. I’m not opposed to saving animals –– if a cute puppy were to cross the street in front of me, I wouldn’t run it over –– but this adventure is purely an experiment. I’m doing it just to see if I can.

In preparation for my weeklong meat, dairy, and gelatin-free adventure, I searched the Internet for vegan-eating rules and information. When I Google searched “veganism,” the pull-quote from Wikipedia read: “Vegans are the result of a conspiracy among the liberal elite to create a new race of inbred, herbivores.” I’m nervous already.

Sunday

12 AM: My vegan week officially begins. I am immediately hungry. I fix myself a bowl of oatmeal. Basically, I’m eating a bowl of mush for dinner. Not satisfied.

Monday

Breakfast: Oatmeal, again, but this time I flavor it with maple syrup and it tastes a lot better. My usual skinny cinnamon dolce latte from Starbucks is replaced with a soy latte. It’s good, and because they use Vanilla Silk, I don’t need any sugar.

Lunch: I’d heard good things about Jax Vegan Café in Westwood, so I go hunting for it. I drive up and down Westwood Boulevard for thirty minutes before I find it. It’s closed on Mondays. Just my luck. I go to plan B and drive to Santa Monica to go to Real Food Daily, another vegan restaurant. It’s closed for construction. Can’t a girl catch a break? I am frustrated and downtrodden, which requires a trip to Ross to cheer me up. But finding ridiculously cheap and cute shoes ($4 for a pair of high heel sandals!) that are made of leather (definitely not vegan) just worsens the situation.

Dinner: I finally find vegan food! I go to Swingers in Santa Monica where I get a vegan burrito: tofu, beans, quinoa, and spinach inside a wheat tortilla with a chipotle-style sauce to top. The spinach is a bit odd, vegan rice would have been better than quinoa, and I get extra sauce to add some more spice and mask the odd ginger flavor (from where? Who knows?!).

Overall, the day wasn’t great, but it could have been a lot worse. I managed to get a filling vegan meal, but Swingers’ vegan burrito is a poor substitution for the real thing. My sister suggests I keep a vegan power bar in my car for the next time I can’t find a quick veg bite. I wonder if power bars are vegan?

[photos from swingersdiner.com]