One week down!

Woo hoo! Today officially marks one whole week since I stopped eating meat and put myself on a vegan challenge. I've also been trying to exercise more. I've heard that if I keep with it, I'll eventually come to like it. Good, because I HATE EXERCISING! Actually, I had a fantastic treadmill experience yesterday. Don't get me wrong, I thought my legs were going to fall off, but I feel awesome today so, there are definite pros to working out.

A quick rundown of what I've cooked this week:
(Oh, by the way? Another thing you should know about me? I freaking love lists.)

Monday - My "cheat day". Mondays are always hectic in my house. Jason doesn't get home until nearly 9, so cooking (if we cook at all) has to be quick and easy. I made a grilled buffalo 'chicken' panini this Monday. It consisted of quickly heating up 'chicken' strips (a vegan version) in a skillet, adding a little vegan 'cheese', Frank's Red Hot, some of the mock ranch dressing I made, on (vegan) wheat bread and pressing it on the George Foreman grill. This actually turned out to be quite tasty!! The 'ranch' was off somehow. I found a few vegan recipes for ranch on the internet and I tried making it. Not bad. Not great. I think what really turned me off was the texture. I was only making a small amount in case it sucked, so I didn't want to drag the blender out. I used a hand blender, and I think that was my mistake.

Ah, a typical Monday meal! Eaten on the floor while watching Castle. I forgot to get a picture of the completed meal, so by the time I remembered, I'd already polished off 1/4 of it. :)

Tuesday - Lentil Pasta and Roasted Green Beans. YUM and YUM! The Lentil Pasta recipe can be found HERE and the Roasted Green Beans recipe HERE. I think next time I make the lentil recipe, I'm going to slightly increase the amount of garlic and decrease the amount of cinnamon. I made the lentils with whole wheat pasta. This dish was tasty, but different than I'm used to. Variety is wonderful!

Lentil Pasta and Green Beans. The green beans look burned, but that's mostly because I added paprika to the recipe. Also, the food doesn't really look all that appetizing, but I'm not a good photographer, and also - this was taken with my phone, haha! :)

So I'm almost halfway through the vegan challenge. Wow! I know I'm eating so much healthier than I was before, exercising more, and I feel great. I'm quite happy and I was telling my husband, "I feel more like myself than I have in a very long time." 2011 has just been quite the healthy year for me!