Nope, no sushi today…I WISH I’d had vegan sushi today! I didn’t take any pics of what I ate today because I was never in a position for the lighting to be good enough for the pic to work. But, today was a successful day, and it made me feel like this vegan challenge is going to work out just fine!

Breakfast was 1 cup of brown rice and some hot sauce, and a travel mug of coffee with soy milk.
Lunch was, as always, at the nasty ol’ Captain’s Galley, where I got a side salad and a baked potato. We’d stopped at Wal-Mart beforehand, and I got some Sabra Roasted Red Pepper hummus and some pico de gallo, so I put both of those on my salad and potato (no dressing on the salad and the croutons removed). It actually made the CG food edible! I think I’ve discovered a combo that’s a winner!

We napped after that because Joey had a really late night working on his paper (I intended to work on mine this afternoon, so it was quite the bummer to have slept the whole time). But dinner was a definite win! I made Potato-Veggie Soup with Cabbage, which was FANTASTIC (the success of the dish was probably directly proportional to the amount of garlic I added to the soup)! I used a little soymilk to make it creamy, and it was thick and warm and delicious. I’ll post the recipe soon…hopefully I can get a decent picture of it at work tomorrow.

So, it was a food success today; I was a little tempted by the cheese tonight that Joey and Cory put on their soup, I’m not going to lie, but I sprinkled a little nutritional yeast on mine and was perfectly content. It’s nice to know that there can be a life out there without cheese.

This weekend has been such a whirlwind; I can’t believe that it’s about to be Monday again and back to the grind! Also, I started Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food yesterday and it’s really excellent…very eye opening. He’s got lots of facts and presents a pretty stark indictment of food processors/corporations and the government in making people’s diets about “nutrients” only and not in the least about “real, whole foods.” Something that I’ve been coming to realize especially over the summer after having read all of these health/fitness/food blogs is that we’ve gotten so far away from real foods that we don’t know how to exist anymore in a world that’s not prepackaged and microwave-ready in ninety seconds.

Almost hands-down, in all of the blogs that I’m currently reading about the above topics, the writers have lost weight and maintain their health, not by sucking down vitamins and supplement powders left and right, and not by eating nutrition bars and power-drinks, but by eating real whole foods. I really believe that it’s something to which we need to return if we don’t want to screw up our childrens’ generation just like we are.

At any rate…that’s enough thought-provoking stuff for the night. I’m going to turn in. Hope everyone survives their Monday!