Tempeh and Gardein and Daikon! Oh My!

I usually post my Project 52 updates on my other blog.  (Well, honestly, I usually don't post my project 52 updates, but whatevs.)  However, I met a goal from my list that seemed more suited to this blog, so I'm sharing about it here.

22.  Visit Whole Foods and buy some vegan meat alternatives.

My mom visited recently, and she is exploring a mostly vegan, mostly organic, mostly raw food diet.  (I know, right?)  She asked me if my local Wal-mart Supercenter has much organic food, and (after I laughed) I told her it has some, but not a lot.

Then I remembered that I'd put this goal on my list, and I thought this would be a perfect opportunity to make the trip.  I knew she would enjoy this outing much more than R would, and it would allow us to get more things that would fit into her diet.

And Whole Foods is awesome you guys.  It's expensive.  But they give out a lot of free samples, so maybe it evens out.  It just made me happy to be in there.  Whole different sort of people than my local Supercenter I'm planning to go more often, whenever I'm in that area.

So, one of my main objectives on this trip was to purchase a variety of Gardein products, because I've heard Ellen DeGeneres talk so much about them, and they are not available within a 60 mile radius of my home.  I had more trouble finding them than I thought.  So, just FYI, if you're looking, there are a lot in the frozen section, but there were some items in other sections too.  I sort of thought there would be like a "Gardein Area" but there was not.

Anyway, the only item I/we have tried so far from that lot is the Boneless Buffalo Wingish Thingies (not the official name).  And honestly, I wasn't much impressed.  They looked like chicken.  I'll give them that.  But taste like chicken?  Not so much.  They didn't taste bad.  Just not like chicken.

R did eat them though.  But there isn't much he won't eat.  Brussels sprouts.  He won't eat them.

So, anyway, we have a couple more products to try, including some tempeh that is supposed to mimic ground beef and some chickenish kind.  But so far, I'm more leaning into the vegan diet by eating actual real non-meat foods.  Like beans, nuts, grains, veggies, etc...  I'd rather eat a real bean than a fake wing.

That said, we did try one of the recipes from The Kind Diet while Mom was here.  Mostly.  It was for a vegan stir-fry, so it was sort of a "make it up as we go" thing more so than strict recipe following.  But, at Ms. Silverstone's suggestion, we used organic brown rice and some organic daikon and leeks we had picked up at Whole Foods.  And it was good!

Leeks aren't that exotic, but I'd never cooked with them.  They are a lot like giant green onions I think.  The daikon I'd never heard of before reading the book.  It's a white root, and it tastes kind of like a mild radish.  Only bigger.  And apparently you are too cook them, rather than eat them in your salad.

So there ya go.  My trip to Whole Foods, and my first adventures in vegan cooking.  Daikon and leeks are a go.  Fake meat substitutes, so far, not getting my vote.

(Oh, and you might notice my ticker has gone down a couple more pounds!  I don't honestly know what to attribute this to exactly.  Swimming a lot?  Eating less meat?  Either way, I'll take it!)