Confession

To the disappointment of some readers, this is not exactly a juicy confession. But I did want to publicly fess up to the fact that my Vegan Experiment has not quite proceeded as planned.

I was, in fact, meticulously vegan for the first two weeks of March (go me!). But around St. Patrick's Day, I slowly caved. It all started with an innocent piece of chocolate, then a cookie at the office bake sale. I thought about pretending those things didn't happen and forging ahead anyway, but then Dan and I traveled to Iowa City this weekend to visit our (always lovely) friends Lena and Brandon. Eating vegetarian food while traveling is difficult. Eating only vegan food while traveling five hours through rural Missouri and Iowa? Near impossible.

And, so, I have had to modify my vegan plan a bit. Despite our slips while eating out, Dan and I have still maintained strictly vegan homecooked meals, with the exception of one meal when we tossed some Pecorino Romano leftover from February onto some pasta and veggies (vegan or not, it's a shame to waste cheese that good). Realizing that my initial plan is not proving to be realistic for me right now, I'm going to modify the plan to vegan-only cooking for the rest of March. Just doing that should help us expand our catalog of vegan meals and hopefully lead to a more vegan lifestyle. I've already found that it's much easier to eat vegan at home than I anticipated, and I've discovered some wonderful vegan baked goods that I'll continue to make, including some truly scrumptious cranberry orange muffins featured on my friend Sally's blog.

So, even though I really want to continue my efforts to reduce the animal products in my diet, it appears that I will not become vegan anytime soon. It's just as well for now. I would really miss cheese.