Vegan before 6

My sister was on Mark Bittman's Vegan Before 6 diet and so of course I had to do it too. There are these 10 pounds I want to lose. I have lost 10 and I need to lose 10 more.

I had heard of VB6 before. Except when I last heard of it I was working pretty much 9 to 5 and it is difficult to be vegan before 6 o'clock under those circumstances. You do not have time to plan perfectly and if you get hungry you are in trouble. You cannot just go to the kitchen to chow down a few more cubes of tofu.

I do the no-meat-on-Friday thing year-round and I was never able to plan well as far as packing my Friday lunch for work. And on Fridays when my stomach was growling, that was when my mind would go to Mark Bittman and VB6.

"Yeah, right," I would say to myself. That is a condescending phrase I picked up from Leonard Pennario.

However, now things are different!

My schedule is more flexible and so this diet is no big deal. It actually reminds me of how I used to eat a long time ago, before I got married and there was this other person in my house who insists on meat. May I add I weighed less then, too. I know it is very possible to eat meat responsibly but still.

Vegan Before 6 is also very similar to this traditional Catholic fast I did during Lent a few years ago. I did get through that OK, now that I think about it, despite office hours.

However as I discovered then, you do have to plan.

I enjoy a game, and I do spend too much time thinking about this because there is nothing like a new diet, so full of promise. I made veggie burgers out of pinto beans from a Moosewood recipe. Ah, here it is!

These beanie burgers are golden. Add some ketchup and ballpark mustard and your mind accepts them as the real thing. It is like what I have read about Mock Apple Pie. I have not had that but I guess what happens is, you use zucchini instead of apples and as long as you add the appropriate spices, nobody knows the difference.

Well, at church they would probably know the difference. At our after-Mass coffee hour I announced I was on the diet.

"Vegan before 6," I said brightly.

And these smart-mouth guys in our congregation are laughing at me.

""So you can eat meat now," one of them told me. "Vegan before 6 a.m."

Hahahahaa!

Why didn't I think of that?

Farm girl

Remember my CSA, Porter Farms?

I am back with them!

Quietly P.F. and I have amassed quite a history. I seem to remember they got annoyed with me once years ago when I complained in the Buzz column that they gave us too much bad news. I complained on this web site too as I recollect. I do like to complain, something that Leonard Pennario and I had in common.

But I love Porter Farms and they know it. I joined it again last year because they were delivering to The Buffalo News. The bags came in Thursday and it was a ton of fun. The newsroom would turn into an Amish market as produce was laid out on desks and coworkers swapped with each other or split shares. Kohlrabi would be held up and puzzled over. People were going around carrying huge bags of greens.

This summer, since I took the buyout at the paper, I get my bag a few blocks away from my house. I am always in a hurry to go get it, always tripping over Howard and the cat.

Then I come home and lay the contents of the bag out on tables and counters. Sometimes I take pictures of it, i.e. the picture above. Occasionally I paint pictures of it. Just today I found a half-done painting attempt and I remembered why I had not finished it. Dinner time arrived and I had to clear all the farm vegetables off the table.

Another thing that makes the farm fun for me is, I do not want to know in advance what is in the bag. They send me emails and I am careful not to open them.

I insist on being surprised!

I was like that last year, too. Ha, ha! Three cheers for the farm that puts up with me.

I guess between that and the aversion to bad news, I am not a CSA's ideal customer.

But I am a faithful one!