Day 29: CAKE AND VEGAN FISH AND CHIPS - FUCKING YES!

In lieu of more grovelling about my cyber slacking, I thought I'd write you a late night post about baking and fish & chips instead. Apologies get boring, chips and cake do not.

This month has been a real test and I have more than failed, however I have discovered a lot about myself, my terrible habits and what I really enjoying sliding between my lips. I thought I would die without butter. You heard all about it here. Well. I have not consumed even the tiniest bit of it this month and I tell you now... I've learnt to survive. It's salty goodness only made me fat so I'm over it. Savlon spread is my new friend. Butter is merely a memory of pregan past.

I awoke this morning to that moment of terror most of you will have experienced at least once. The one when you realise the sheets are not yours and you have little recollection of events leading to your nudity and/ or geographical location. Thankfully, I was at my friends house and had innocently passed out, mouth gaping, clutching my toothbrush. Anyway, she's a terribly healthy lass and has cupboards that are more vegan than mine will ever be, so had loads of legal hangover help in food form. The visit also brought back an old memory...

Vitalite! You'd forgotten about it too hadn't you?! Well, in addition to producing one of the most memorable adverts/ catchy jingles about a fake butter ever, they also still make VEGAN fake butter. I've even double checked the site as I could barely see this morning so missed the stamp on the tub!

Among the key learning of the month have been that I need to do considerably more intense and focused research on two topics: CHIPS & CAKE! I know that publicly blogging offers the chance to create the sophisticated, demure, groomed persona you potentially dreamed of, however I decided against that from the very start. Why waste your energy bullshitting? I don't want to be fat but I do occasionally enjoy the most quintessential of British fodder: chips and cake, and I may as well tell the world about it. I love them so much so that I have failed the challenge twice due to consumption of chips. One was Day 24, the other was.... today. I'm hungover, it was out of my hands. My body did the talking, forgive and forget jaaa?

Now chips came up in discussion way back on Day 5 with a friend who is very well informed on the Fish & Chip industry and it's techniques. Having a father who owns multiple Fish & Chip shops around central England, this particularly enterprising friend initiated a concept called Celiac Tuesday where, yup, you're there, every Tuesday saw specific oil and equipment used to enable all the local sufferers to creep from the woodwork for their fishy fix. Now, why the hell aren't there vegan chips out there??? Well, some quick googling tells me that there are, you just have to find them. If any of you are in the North, perhaps you could whizz over to Manchester to the Chorlton Big Green Festival and find the folk at Something Fishy to try some for me? Until I get back into my freelance world, I'm trapped down south plotting and planning, so could do with some roving reviewers to do some legwork for me...

Today really was an eventful one and at last, it saw me cross the threshold into the wonderful Brixton world of Ms Cupcake. I've talked about her a lot but hadn't actually tried a full cake, only a bit of icing at Brighton shamblefest. Well worth it, is my summation. Although terribly, terribly sweet, those cupcakes are seriously good and motherfuckingveeeeegggaaaaannnn. You really wouldn't know it either. The Triple Chocolate one is yet another specific item that I can honestly say will keep my on that vegan wagon. If I can get sweet hits like Booja Booja and this super, rich, incredible delicious chocolate cupcake, vegan life will be ok. I've discovered that butter can go to hell but cake is here to stay, so it better be vegan!

Despite the stupid hour already, I'm popping out to one of those evil 24hr hypermarkets around the corner for some vegan items to whizz up into the following cakes. I've got folk to thank and I want to do it with cake. If I don't make the bloody thing, some other dickhead will go and buy one full of earlobes and little eggy foeti that I can't eat. That's not happening.

I'll try and take some pics and give you a review of how these two bad boys work out;

Suma's Banana Chocolate cake 

Vanilla Pineapple Cake

I wish I didn't but I really enjoy late night baking! Right, I'm off...

Day 27 and 28: DID NOT EXIST

Yesterday, 27th March 2012 basically did not exist. It didn't happen. It was a blur or a day that began on Monday 26th 2012 after 2hrs sleep. 

Bad planning, procrastination, chaos, disorder, lacking confidence in my own decision making and a disturbing lack of technical skills are many of the reasons for this ridiculous behaviour. I punished myself brutally for being so chaotic and now feel like absolute shit. If any of this sounds familiar to you, it won't come as much of a surprise that I had a college deadline yesterday. 

After surviving my all night marathon and dragging myself, an A1 portfolio and a bag full of sketchbooks etc 20 mins to the train station, I was then forced to stand on the packed train for the entire journey between Brighton to London. Ouch! I was so tired that I kept falling asleep standing up, waking up as I was about to fall over. I can only imagine how funny that must have been to observe. Can you believe that even with that kind of display, not one person wanted to volunteer their seat?!

Day 28 was much the same, blur blur, invigilation, hanging out with my parents and then going to my own private view. Yes that is the truth. MY OWN PRIVATE VIEW. It wasn't a solo show sadly, just a tiny space within the City Lit Foundation Course show, but one day. You have to start somewhere right? 

So forgive me for slacking but I have been arting and socialising. I have also been thinking very hard about how to continue from here on. Blogging daily is tough, tough, though and I just don't understand how people do it in their spare time alongside real life jobs etc. I'm thinking about it.. 

Day 26: TOO BUSY FOR BLOGGING... OR EATING PROPERLY!

BUSY BUSY BUSY.

But I have some very good news. More sweet snacks have made it through my rigorous taste tests....

Montezuma's Orange and Geranium Chocolate... delicious AND vegan!

and Provamel chocolate desserts. Yum, yum, yum. Buy them here if you so wish.

Having a mental week with far too much time either spent in London or travelling one way or the other. It's taken over three hours door to door, on three of my return journeys this week - aaaagh! Anyway, it means that I've been living on Pret Hummus wraps and ready salted crisps. I don't know if either of those are officially vegan but seriously, what are you supposed to do? Anyone who knows me knows I get a bit mad if I have too big a gap between meals and my willpower is severely waning now. I don't know where any more mystery body parts hide. I've got the obvious ones down, but I just don't know about anything else and no-one seems to bother with labelling anything for vegans, so it looks like the dull side of this will continue long into April.

*UPDATE*
Balls. I've just looked online and no, the Pret wrap is not vegan. I HATE THIS! I swear the label in the shop doesn't mention the yoghurt dressing, I swear it. Either way, the website lays it all out for us. Ball, balls, balls.

http://www.pret.com/menu/baguettes_wraps/chunky_humous_salad_wrap_PUK4334.shtm

That reminds me, M&S have really fallen to an incredible depth way into my bad books. I've been into two different Simply Food stores this week to grab something in a rush and could not find a single thing that stated it was vegan. Am I looking at the wrong food or do they in practice, not bother with the vegan label? The website says they do, but of course it does. Has anyone ever seen one in real life?!

Day 25: LATE AGAIN BUT WHAT'S A DEAD COW TO DO?

Source: http://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.co.uk/2010_01_01_archive.html

So, in the wee small hours of Day 26, I write about Day 24's realisation that led to Day 25 and the topic I will discuss now. Boundaries.

Wikipedia provides an explanation of some appropriate terms; 

Boundaries

"Personal boundaries define you as an individual. They are statements of what you will or won't do, what you like and don't like...how close someone can get to you. Personal boundaries are guidelines, rules or limits that a person creates to identify for him- or herself what are reasonable, safe and permissible ways for other people to behave around him or her and how he or she will respond when someone steps outside those limits".

Guidelines

"A guideline is a statement by which to determine a course of action. A guideline aims to streamline particular processes according to a set routine or sound practice. By definition, following a guideline is never mandatory. Guidelines are not binding and are not enforced".

Limits

"The Chandrasekhar limit (/tʃʌndrəˈʃeɪkɑr/) is the maximum mass of a stable white dwarf star. It was named after Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, the Indian astrophysicist who predicted it in 1930. White dwarfs, unlike main sequence stars, resist gravitational collapse primarily through electron degeneracy pressure, rather than thermal pressure. The Chandrasekhar limit is the mass above which electron degeneracy pressure in the star's core is insufficient to balance the star's own gravitational self-attraction. Consequently, white dwarfs with masses greater than the limit undergo further gravitational collapse, evolving into a different type of stellar remnant, such as a neutron star or black hole. Those with masses under the limit remain stable as white dwarfs. The Chandrasekhar limit is analogous to the Tolman–Oppenheimer–Volkoff limit for neutron stars."

As you can see, I'm having some technical issues today. I'm not in the best frame of mind right now. Kind of hallucinating through lack of sleep and excess time infront of a computer. FCP maaaaaannn. If anyone would like to fix them, do let me know. Otherwise I vow to do better tomorrow.

SO basically, what I'm saying about boundaries is that they are frameworks we create for ourselves and the lives that we are building around us. Sometimes it's nowhere near a conscious thing but we do often also have a remote view, even if purely instinctual about where we are heading and in what we believe.

This project has questioned so many things, not least where I would like to set my boundaries in terms of what I wish to be prepared and consumed, to then be broken down and become a part of what and who I am. 

This really is how I began to think before I became a vegetarian. After being repeatedly ill in Bolivia. Really, really ill, unable to leave my bedroom for days because of fever and the stomach pains. It was really horrible and I began to wonder if the animals were trying to send me a message. I know it sounds ridiculous but what other option would they have?! They couldn't exactly schedule a meeting or contact me through my website could they? What's a dead cow to do?

I would like to remain vegan, particularly removing all dairy products from my diet, for good. I just think it will be really difficult, especially while I am not entirely prepared for a life of vegan cooking. So I think that from April, I will try to live as a vegan full time, sometimes permitting a wander off piste until I really get the diet right. 
If someone makes a cake using a dairy product, I happen to "knock on" (Sharpe, N. 2012. February 27th, Hackney) and I am promptly offered tea and a piece of said special homecrafted baked good of sorts, what point is there in me not enjoying a piece of the cake that already exists and will exit regardless of what I believe in? 
Or is the hope and perhaps intention that the world will become less reliant on animal products and their derivitives, so that a vegan diet becomes inherently more possible, supported and widespread. Information is the main thing that limits the vegan community. People really don't know what they are eating and for a large part, do not seem to care. However, much as I'm not a huge fan, look at what Jamie Oliver did with his school dinners programme? He really got in there and made people think. 

I'm rambling, farewell.

ps- Jamie goes vegetable for a month.

(source:http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1383582/Jamie-Olivers-Food-Revolution-chopped-American-TV-blow-crusade.html)

Day 24: THE ULTIMATE FAILURE

Day 24 was an accidental, massive, failure in almost every possible way. I failed because I;

• Didn't write a post

• Ate chips, from a chip shop cooked in from non vegan oil.

• I also had mushy peas. I have no idea how you would even begin to make mushy peas but I guess butter and possibly milk? cream?

• The above offending items were accompanied by sugary, sugary ketchup and a can of tango. Tango?! I never, ever drink tango, so I really don't know what I was thinking. 

• Tried to guess which beer would be vegan. Secretly thinking I knew the answer, I chose Kronenbourg. A few sips in, my friend whipped out his clever internet phone and used veggiewines to confirm that of all of the beers in this particular pub I had inadvertently selected the wrong one. The barman wouldn't change it so I decided that having already failed on a huge scale, the reign may as well continue. The fish had already been de-bladdered. Wasting the rest of the delicious pint was not going to take that back.

At the end of what was a very long day, I made my friend promise never to speak of the repeat failing. Instead though, I've decided to discuss it myself as I did promise to be honest here and a day of shameful introspection has given me an interesting perspective. I have returned to a topic that has popped up in my thought process a few times; the notion of boundaries. As this is technically day 25, I am signing out here, to return to discuss this further....

Day 23: GLOBAL GUEST BLOGGING

As promised, here's today's guest blog post from a dear friend in faraway lands. She's been on a big adventure and as mentioned, has spent the day under house arrest. Apparently the pain was softened with a vegan lunch, alas an irritating ipad and other difficulties meant that a blog about today was not possible. Who cares though right? So long as my cyber world knows I have well travelled friends thinking of me and the vegan trial with every vegetable they consume, everyone's forgiven.

She's most definitely not vegan but a food pig after my own heart who does like her vegetables and can put a few nice words together. Now let's hear what she has to say:

"I am indeed in Bali, but I as I am trapped in the hotel celebrating the new years day in the wildest fashion possible by staying silent and still I cannot fully contribute about vegan Bali today.....so let's start with what I found in India....

.....Potatoes! Potatoes and more potatoes! I'm so sick of potatoes! Don't get  me wrong the food there was amazing but I have a rule when I eat - my food must have at least three different colours in it, always including green. Now when every meal is yellow in colour (like me) it doesn't matter how almost-vegan it is or healthy, it's just boring....yellow, ochre, brown.....so I resorted to raw salads and juices (erm don't try it unless you're up for projectile vomit from both ends, I didn't mind that too much as I had no time for ashrams and Ayurvedic treatments so I saw that as my detox enema sessions). 

But what I really want to tell you about vegan finds in India is the cake man of Pushkar.   There's a man pushing a cake cart from 8pm every night in Pushkar selling vegan cakes that he makes himself. They are soooooooo good. Banana crumble anyone? Spiced cake? Apple pie? He even makes gluten free raw chocolate balls. 40 rupees a slice, divide by 77, it's like, 0.00000008 micro pennies per slice.  Ok its got honey but its so bloody yummy. He wraps them in pages from a manky old book he keeps in the cart. Oh and for the non vegans, the lassi in Jaipur is to die for. Sure you might die in that awful city but at least have a lassi first". 

(I don't know who or what this last pic is, but it's beautiful and I would rather have spent three hours there today than travelling back from London. thisisveganmarch)

Day 23: GUEST BLOG FROM BALI... COMING UP

That's right cyber family, today you're getting a real treat. Instead of a bad, hastily written post by a lazy trial vegan who has had very little sleep and is incredibly sick of looking at a computer screen, you are going to get a little taste of vegan Bali thanks to a good friend who is currently trapped in a hotel room as part of the National New Year 'celebrations'...

COMING UP...