I woke up on the first of January feeling absolutely awful. Food, vegan or otherwise was the last thing on my mind.
Look it was New Years’ Eve last night, so I had a few (or more) drinks last night (just at home with the family, all covid-safe). Today, I’m feeling the repercussions in many ways.
Anyway, when my head eased it’s thumping enough to finally compute, I remembered that I have decided to tackle Veganuary and it starts today.
Breakfast – Nothing & Water
This is going to be a bit of a boring update, if I’m being honest, because I honestly couldn’t handle much food. I spent the morning sipping on a bottle of water, and when I finally dared, some coffee with oat milk.
I do like oat milk, usually, but today anything that wasn’t water was making me gag. I threw the coffee away.
So I skipped my first vegan breakfast and opted to wait until lunch time.
Lunch – Leon Chimichurri Cheeze and Herb Bites
Look I was not up for making anything complicated so I just shoved these in the oven. I thanked my lack of impulse control, as I literally just decided to buy these on a whim. Right now, I couldn’t stomach anything proper so it was a relief to find that I had something snacky.
The real problem started when my family announced they were getting a KFC, and a quick internet search showed that the vegan burger would be back on the 4th of January, which was no good for me as I needed it now, on the 1st. Hungover KFC is my favourite, so I was a little disappointed but I showed resilience and stuck to my plan (the plan being just eat vegan things).
I got my Chimichurri Cheeze Bites out of the oven and ignored the Megaboxes that my family had ordered. I even refused the offer of KFC fries, partly because I don’t really like them, and partly because they’re technically not vegan as they are cooked in the same fryer as the Popcorn Chicken (#JustExKFCEmployeeThings).
Anyway, the fake cheese bites. Or Cheeze Bites.
They don’t look like much, but this worked for me, because I was still feeling sick. Also they were a day out of date, but I eat old rice on the regular (apparently this is a bad thing to do, but I’m still alive) so I’m sure I can handle it.
They tasted pretty good, mostly just the flavour of chimichurri, which I know I like anyway. Unfortunately, I couldn’t finish them as I was just feeling too icky.
Mid-Afternoon Snack – Toast
Despite still feeling iffy about possibly chucking up anything that I ate, I began to feel quite hungry. Toast seemed like a safe option to me, so I decided to snack on a slice of toast with my Vitalite Dairy Free Spread. I feel like simply naming something ‘Spread’ is a bit ominous, but apparently there’s legalities about the fat content of margarine and margarine isn’t sold in the UK anymore (source: The QI website). Anyway, I had Vitalite Spread on my toast. It’s not quite the same as butter, but it did the job.
Dinner – Yaki Mochi with Soy Sauce & Umeboshi
Still feeling wary of eating anything too heavy, and too tired to cook something proper, I opted for some mochi for dinner.
This is probably not what you’re thinking. Recently mochi has been some sort of trend, mostly the sweet varieties with some sort of ice cream filling or whatever. Yeah, I didn’t have that for dinner. I stoop quite low with food sometimes (ketchup pasta and plain rice with cheese have been some low points in my life), but I still feel like I ought to eat something savoury for my main meals.
Anyway, yaki mochi. Basically, mochi is just rice that’s been pounded. A lot. You can buy it fresh in Japan sometimes, but it’s easier to buy these packets of hard mochi, called kiri mochi. We usually stock up and bring a load home to the UK but maybe it’s available in some Japanese food stores, though I’ve never checked. I chucked a kiri mochi under the grill and waited for it to puff up.
When it was ready, I added some soy sauce. I usually have it with some nori (dried seaweed) too, but apparently the brand we usually like had some fish in. So I couldn’t have nori. Thankfully, we also had some umeboshi. These are ume fruits, but pickled. I don’t know what exactly ume is, so I usually describe umeboshi as really saltly pickled plums.
I suppose it doesn’t look particularly appetizing, but this is one of my favourite snacks/small dinners, so it was good to know that minus the nori I can still have it (I’m also sure that there must be some nori out there that is vegan but I don’t currently have any in my house).
Late Night Snack – Oreos
I got kinda hungry late at night, so I decided to wolf down some Oreos. I have loads of Oreos because I got a load as a Christmas gift so I’ll be making my way through them this month.
Day One Summary
In some ways, I feel like this wasn’t a particularly successful day as I didn’t really eat much. I definitely didn’t bother with any cooking, just shoved stuff in the oven and prayed I could stomach it.
On the other hand, I didn’t eat anything that wasn’t vegan, even when faced with KFC (my favourite!). That’s a good start in my opinion, and hopefully tomorrow I’ll feel a bit more up for making and eating more food.
Extra advice: Don’t drink, it’s bad for you.
Ellie May Sibley 