[url=https://www.tinboats.net/forum/viewtopic.php?p=345404#p345404 said:
one100grand » 19 Mar 2014, 09:22[/url]"]Last night we had an amazing pasta dinner. We made pesto and added a little bit of cilantro & toasted sesame oil; meanwhile sauteed some zucchini & onions in a pan with olive oil. Brought some water to boil, added salt, then threw in rice noodles, turned off the heat, and covered for 3 minutes while I sauteed some mushrooms with olive oil, salt & pepper. I combined the pesto, zucchini, & onions with some sliced tomatoes and put over medium heat, then after draining the noodles, added them to the mixture & topped with the sauteed mushrooms. Definitely one of the best vegan dishes I've ever had and one of the better pasta dishes I've had in the past few years.
I noticed there was a lot of frying/sautéing going on with that meal preparation, for an extra challenge try no frying or sautéing on your vegan week... steam, boil, broil, bake, or grill everything instead and don't use any butter or oils.
Going vegan is actually pretty easy for me, but I wouldn't go completely vegan all the time. Meat is actually part of a healthy diet for human beings. It's the way it is cooked sometimes that is the bad part, pan frying and deep frying. I live in the deep southeast and sometimes I think the one main food group down here is fried, you can go into a lot of restaurants down here and everything on the menu will be fried except for the salads and a baked potato.
If you want a real challenge for a diet, try a low fat diet. Cut your total fat intake down to less than 30 grams a day, and if you really want to get serious try cutting it down to less than 20 grams per day. This will require going into the fridge and throwing away the butter dish, the mayo jar, all the regular salad dressings, the ice cream, and pastries... but you'll lose weight like crazy and feel healthier than you ever have. But giving up the fat takes work and is hard when you first start, but you get used to it and may even enjoy the challenge of seeing just how far you can cut your total fat intake down.
My wife goes on the Mayo Clinic diet kick every once in a while which requires going mainly vegan with lots of raw fruits and veggies, but she can never stay on it for very long because all the raw roughage makes her poop herself blind. I've tried to explain the advantages of a low fat diet to her but she says it's too hard and isn't willing to give up some of the foods it requires to go that route.
Then there's the other end of the spectrum, how about trying to go all carnivore with no vegetables for a week? I'm sure that would be more difficult than the vegan or low fat diet, at least for me.
