Going Vegan

What an adventure this cancer journey has been and is continuing to be! I am "reconfiguring" my food philosophy, and deciding what foods are going to be the best for my body during and after the cancer process. I have decided to become vegan. For the most part. I will still eat fish. And if I happen to go out to eat or eat at a friend's house, I will not grill the servers and the hosts about how they cooked the food, what is in every little bite, etc. But for the majority of the time, I will eat a vegan diet.


Angela, whose blog you can find at http://www.thepaintedhouse.blogspot.com/, and whose dinner blog (which is vegan and sugar free, people, check it out!!) is at www.dinnersready.blogspot.com, has been petitioning people on my behalf from her blog, and has raised $420 for our family in the form of a gift card from Whole Foods. I think it would be impossible for me to even consider this lifestyle change if not for Whole Foods, and this gift card is such a lifesaver, because the doctor's bills were really eating into our funds!


Many thanks go to Angela, and Bonnie who did Angela's running around for her since she doesn't even live here. (Did I mention that I have not even met Angela? We will meet soon, though, as she has invited Mike and I to stay at their vacation cottage in North Carolina for free for a weekend after my chemo is done! Isn't she wonderful!?) Also, there were several other people who donated to the gift card also, all of whom I haven't met. There are some wonderful people in this crazy world of ours!


Throughout the week, I will be posting some reading material that I have gathered from the book The Complete Idiot's Guide to Vegan Cooking by Beverly Lynn Bennett and Ray Sammartano. I hope this will help to explain vegan nutrition to those of you who may have no clue what I will be eating, and may be worried about my health because of this decision.

I am doing a lot of writing these days in my "Vegan Notebook", because I am writing a research paper to help me better understand my decision. I tend to jump into decisions without thinking them through thoroughly, and if I make the decision to be vegan it will most likely be a lifelong thing, so I can't take it lightly.



Here it is! Your first installment of The Vegan Times.



Definition of a Vegan



"If you're eating vegan, you eat foods that come from plant-based sources like whole grains, beans and legumes, fruits, vegetables, and even the aquatically harvested sea vegetables. You avoid all animal-based foods and their rendered or processed byproducts, like meat, fish, fowl, eggs, all dairy products, and even honey and gelatin." pg. 3 TCIGTVC



I will still be eating fish and honey, and who knows about gelatin. Haven't researched that yet.



That's all for now! This means that I will be posting a lot more often. :-)