A brief interruption…
Before we begin today, I’d like to take a moment and remember the great man and musician that was Tom Petty.
In 2014, Tom said this about George to NPR:
“We became very good friends, really, for decades. I don’t like to bring it up that much, because The Beatles are so special that people might see it as boasting or something. But he actually became my friend, past being a Beatle to me. It was like having an older brother that had a lot of experience in the music business, someone who I could go to with my troubles and questions… but the best thing I can say to people that are curious about that is George was probably everything that you thought he was, and then some more. Very funny man; he could just kill me with his humor. He was a great guy and I miss him terribly.”
Tom passed away yesterday evening after suffering cardiac arrest. He was 66 years old. Thank you for all the wonderful music and memories you brought us Tom, you will be dearly missed.
Tom Petty
1950 – 2017
Good day Sunshine!
If you read the last post, you know that I hinted that I would be doing something concerning vegetarianism in the next post. Thus, here we are!
All Together Now… for some history!
Paul has been a strict vegetarian and animal-rights activist since 1975. He credits his late wife, Linda, for introducing him to vegetarianism and helping him to start being an activist for animal rights. Their children, Heather (from Linda’s previous marriage), Mary, Stella (yes, the famous fashion designer), and James, followed in their parents footsteps by converting to vegetarianism and continuing to campaign for animal rights. Paul said this about converting to vegetarianism in 2008:
“Many years ago, I was fishing, and as I was reeling in the poor fish, I realized, ‘I am killing him — all for the passing pleasure it brings me.’ And something inside me clicked. I realized as I watched him fight for breath, that his life was as important to him as mine is to me.”
Paul often credits his good health and plentiful energy to his vegetarian diet (and frequent exercise, which involves doing headstands for five minutes or more). Considering that Paul is still doing world tours at 75 years old, it seemed like a good deal to me.
Note: Paul is a vegetarian, not a vegan. He still eats (and enjoys) eggs, cheese, milk, and other animal by-products; he just doesn’t eat meat. When asked why he didn’t go vegan, he said that he “likes cheese and eggs”. He went on to say that since chickens will lay eggs and cows will make milk naturally, he feels that he can eat them, since it doesn’t require killing the animal.
Additionally, fellow Beatle Ringo Starr is also a vegetarian. George Harrison was the first Beatle to go vegetarian (in the late 1960s), and maintained his vegetarian diet until his death in 2001.
I have thought about going vegetarian in the past; I love animals, and I have taken measures to cut back on my intake of certain meats (I’ve cut back completely on lamb, and I’m cutting back on my beef and pork). Additionally, I believe reducing your meat intake can be beneficial to the environment. Before this, however, the longest I have gone without eating meat was probably one day. Eating meat is so ingrained into my consciousness, I don’t even realize when I’m eating it sometimes. So I’d like to see if I can break that cycle.
So without further ado, here I go to eat like Paul!
Day One – Thursday
Breakfast: A breakfast of champions: leftover cheese pizza from Papa John’s. But hey, who doesn’t like leftover pizza? So far, so good.
Lunch: Towards the end of my first class, I started to get a grumble in my stomach. I began to think of where on campus I can get a vegetarian lunch. I have an hour-and-a-half break between classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, so I usually go relax and do some homework at Boko’s Living Room, a quiet lounge for students designed to look like a living room (complete with beanbags, couches, and TVs), after my first class. Next to Boko’s is the sub shop Blimpie, which (thankfully) offers a veggie sub as part of my meal plan. I loaded up a wheat bun with Provolone, lettuce, tomatoes, onions, olives, pickles, and ranch dressing. All served up with a side of cheddar Sun Chips. It wasn’t the best sandwich in the world, but it was pretty tasty!
Dinner: I knew my boyfriend, Dallas, was going to be coming over that evening, so I asked him what he wanted me to make for dinner. Given his love of Italian food, he requested spaghetti. So that evening, I made the beta version of what was to become the vegetarian version of Aunt Jessie’s Spaghetti. Though he was missing the protein from the meat, he stated that it was absolutely delicious.
For dessert, I bought Dallas a pint of protein-rich chocolate ice cream from Halo Top, and we shared it together. Day One was a success.
Day Two – Friday
Breakfast: I did what every dietitian advises people not to do in the morning, and skipped breakfast. Booo, I know. But I have a class at 10 A.M. on Friday mornings, so I almost never have time to sit down and have breakfast.
Lunch: After class, I scour around campus to find something to bring back to my apartment for lunch. This is a little tricky, as many restaurants with meal plan-friendly vegetarian options on campus are either closed on Friday, or have super-long lines. After searching around campus for about 25 minutes, I ended up at Au Bon Pain. I ordered a Garden Veggie Wrap with avocado, tomatoes, cucumbers, carrots, arugula, romaine lettuce, and lemon vinaigrette in a whole wheat wrap. However, this was not part of the meal plan, and I ended up dishing out $8 for it.
When I returned to my apartment, I let it sit in the fridge, as I wasn’t quite hungry enough yet. When I went to eat it, it turned out very soggy, and it kept falling apart on me when I was trying to eat it. Not really worth the $8, but hey, it’s food.
Dinner: That evening, I went with my roommate, Brooke, to hang out with her friends. They were serving pepperoni pizza from DiGiorno (my weakness), but I picked the pepperoni off my slices and enjoyed the pizza very happily. After the sad wrap from lunch, I needed this.
Additionally, her friends made molten chocolate brownies for dessert that were absolutely heavenly. I’m still thinking about them.
Day Three – Saturday
Breakfast: After returning from spending the night at Brooke’s friends’ apartment, I went into the kitchen to heat up the leftover spaghetti from Thursday. I sat on the couch and took a few bites, when my roommate, Sara, asked if I wanted to go have lunch with her and her friends in Austin. That was an offer I couldn’t refuse, so I put the spaghetti away to save room for lunch.
Lunch: We drove to a lofty Pho restaurant east of Downtown Austin called Pho Please. Anyone who knows me knows about my love of noodles, so I was very excited to try this place. I ordered the Vegan Pho Chay; which includes vegan broth, rice noodles, tofu, broccoli, bok choy, carrots, cabbage, mushrooms, red onion, scallions, cilantro, Thai basil, lime, chili sauce, and bean sprouts. I ordered a side of vegetarian egg rolls as well.
We had a feast of Vietnamese food, and it was glorious. The egg rolls were perfectly crispy and warm, and had an amazing, buttery umami flavor to them. The pho was delicious as well. It had that amazing herbal flavor from the cilantro and the basil, the acidity from the onions and the lime juice, the crunch from the bok choy and the cabbage, and the spice from the chili sauce. However, I felt like I was missing some umami, which chicken or chicken broth would have provided. Although I was very satisfied with my pho, I felt just a teensy bit envious of Sara and her friends’ chicken pho. Altogether though, my stomach was very gleeful.
Dinner: That night, I drove out to Austin to go to The Rocky Horror Picture Show (a favorite event of mine) at the Alamo Drafthouse. After such a big lunch, I wasn’t very hungry for dinner, so I just ordered french fries with a side of ranch dressing. Were they very nutritious? No. But did they make me happy? Very much so.
Day Four – Sunday
Breakfast: I felt like I was starting feel the effects of this diet on my body. For some reason, I was not as hungry anymore. I ate the rest of my leftover spaghetti, and that kept me plenty full for the next several hours.
Snacks: Since I didn’t have lunch, I snacked on Flavor Blasted Goldfish here and there.
Dinner: Sunday marked my one-month anniversary with my boyfriend, so I decided to take him out for a small dinner. We decided to go to Italian Garden in downtown San Marcos. I had been meaning to go there for a while, but I never got around to doing it.
The place was cozy, and the complimentary garlic bread was very appetizing. I ordered the Cheese Tortellini Alfredo, and Dallas ordered the beef ravioli. My tortellini was very creamy, albeit slightly on the oily side. The cheese inside was a little doughy as well. I found myself wanting to take a bite of Dallas’s ravioli. However, I found it to be pretty tasty and very filling. I only ate about half before I declared that I couldn’t eat anymore. Overall, I’d definitely come back here another night.
Day Five – Monday
Breakfast: I felt a little sluggish that morning, and probably because I only ate pasta the day before. How do I fix that? With more pasta. Due to my class schedule, I don’t have time to eat lunch on Mondays. Therefore, I try to eat as much as I can before class to hold me over until dinner. I ate my leftover tortellini, along with my leftover pho and a few Goldfish. I overcooked my tortellini slightly, and that left the Alfredo sauce congealed and oily. However, I still ate it and enjoyed it. I found the pho to still be rather palatable.
Dinner: After my last class, I stopped by Asado at Jones Dining Hall to get a burrito bowl. They were out of tofu at the moment, so I decided to get extra black beans and brown rice instead. I topped it off with lettuce, cilantro, red onions, queso fresco, sour cream, and guacamole. I planned to cook the spaghetti recipe for the blog that night and eat it for dinner tomorrow, but a flat tire on my car threw a wrench into my plans. I still managed to get my groceries for the dish though.
Day Six – Tuesday
Breakfast: Fried eggs over-hard. I have never been a fan of eggs over-easy (or runny yolks in general), so I always try to cook them over hard. Paul is a self-proclaimed fan of fried eggs.
Lunch: Same as Thursday! A Veggie Supreme sub from Blimpie.
Dinner: Aunt Jessie’s Spaghetti. Turned out much better than the first time that I made it.
Day Seven – Wednesday
Breakfast: I started to notice that my stomach had shrunk just a little bit, so I decided to make myself something special that morning. I cooked an omelet with spinach, onion, Parmesan, hot sauce, and chives. This turned out very good, and my body was ready to start the day.
Lunch: I’m only in class until 3:30 on Wednesday, so I came back from school and had a late lunch. I heated up some Sam’s Choice Mozzarella Sticks, and served them with a side of the spaghetti marinara sauce from the night before. I could only eat three sticks before feeling full. It was at this point in the day that all I was craving was seafood, specifically paella. I envisioned myself in a tapas bar in Spain, being served a piping-hot plate of fresh paella full of seafood. My stomach growled a little louder.
Dinner: I had a busy evening that night, and decided to make the quintessential college meal: ramen noodles. However, I was stopped in my tracks when I realized that ramen noodles contain chicken broth. Chicken broth doesn’t have any actual meat, but it does require that the animal be killed in order to make it, so I decided to avoid it. Instead, I made a toasted wrap containing a fried egg, spinach, onions, Parmesan, and Sriracha mayo in a toasted flour tortilla. I have made the non-vegetarian version of this before, but this was almost just as delicious.
Day Eight – Thursday
Breakfast: I had an exam on Thursday, so it was fried eggs over-hard for me. While cooking it, I accidentally set the temperature in my pan too high and set off the smoke alarm (which thankfully turned off after one beep).
Lunch: Taking a break from an intense study session before my exam, I ordered my new usual from Blimpie: the veggie sub with Sun Chips.
Dinner: Dallas came over that evening, so I asked him what he wanted for dinner again. He asked if we could have takeout from the Chinese place here that he tried for the first time a few weeks earlier: Wok n’ Roll. Dallas ordered the Chicken Garlic Sauce, while I ordered the Broccoli Garlic Sauce. It came with a side of spring rolls and fried rice as well. Surprisingly, this was super satisfying, and I didn’t look over and crave any of Dallas’s chicken. The spring rolls and the fried rice were rather scrumptious as well.
Final Day – Friday
Breakfast: Just a handful of Goldfish crackers this morning, as I was rushing to get to class.
Lunch: I was in the mood for some pasta, so I decided to order some Rigatoni Alfredo from Woods St. Pizza at Jones Dining Hall after class. This came with a garlic knot on the side. The pasta was nothing to really write home about, but it was satisfying.
Dinner: For my last meal of the challenge, I decided to go all-out and make one of Paul’s favorite dishes. According to Neatorama, three of Paul’s favorite dishes are Chip Butties (steak fries with ketchup or mayonnaise sandwiched between two generously-buttered pieces of toast, I chose to use mayo since I was out of ketchup), fried eggs, and mashed potatoes with diced onions. I decided to take the Chip Butty one step further, by putting the fried egg inside the sandwich as well. I bought steak fries from Wal-Mart, and seasoned them with extra salt, pepper, and olive oil before baking them. For the mashed potatoes, I decided to buy made-in-store mashed potatoes (boo me all you want, I was short on time) and jazz them up with extra butter, cream, chives, parsley, salt, pepper, and garlic. Then I diced up a quarter of an onion and tossed it in there.
Let me start off by saying that the Chip Butty is very English, and I was worried about the taste. But it actually surprised me, a lot. It was absolutely delightful, the crisp, buttery toast with the salty eggs and steak fries and the creamy mayo made it rather heavenly. The mashed potatoes were quite delectable as well. However, the sandwich was super rich, and I could only finish about three-quarters of it. I liked it so much though, that I made it again for lunch the next day.
Eating my first plate of chicken after the challenge was rather odd, as my mindset was still “you can’t eat that”.
I actually thought this was a fun challenge! Despite me craving meat every once in a while, I didn’t have any real problems being on this diet! I felt less hungry, and I felt more energetic. I wouldn’t mind doing it again (and then again I might just…). I surprised myself by how much meat I actually eat every day, and by how good the food that Paul loves really is (I’m looking at you, Chip Butty). A fun bonus: I lost a little weight! I lost 2 pounds as a result of this challenge.
All in all, I think Paul would have been pretty proud.
Quick update: The upload schedule is changing! Posts will now be uploaded Tuesday and Friday. See you Friday!
Bites with The Beatles 