meg.antinucci

So as of Sunday it has officially been one week of my Vegan challenge and so far so good! I am really loving it so far, I have had a lot of energy and feel great.  I thought that it would be much harder for me to give up cheese since I literally ate mozzarella like every single day.   Honestly I really don’t miss it at all, however it has been a tad difficult making substitutions to certain recipes.  I could not believe how so many products that you would never think had dairy actually contain dairy or dairy by-products.  The most shocking so far was Italian bread crumbs who would have thought?  It does get a bit annoying having to read the thousands of ingredients on some products like bread, why do there have to be a hundred different chemicals in a simple loaf of bread when you can make it with literally flour, water, yeast, and oil.  But that’s a whole other issue!

I have been eating a lot of fruit and veggies if I am starving I will just grab something quick because its easy and I know the ingredients of bananas and grapes!  Some of my go-to recipes have been my veggie chili, and veggie soup, I have just been omitting the cheese and they both still have so much flavor that you can’t tell.  I have also been obsessed with pineapple for some reason it has been delicious down here.

We still had our family pizza night and I have to say I wasn’t sure about this one, how can you have pizza without cheese? No it wasn’t as amazing as your traditional cheese pizza which usually have around 200-300 calories for one slice, but it was really good and had a fraction of the calories.  For two individual pizzas it was just under 200 calories and I was definitely full after eating two of them!

Salads are always a great idea, but sometimes I just don’t feel like eating lettuce and you have to really read the ingredients for salad dressings.  Many contain cheese, yogurt, or other by-products.  My go-to dressings have been homemade Italian which is basically olive oil, balsamic, and Italian seasonings.  I also came up with an avocado dressing which was really easy, creamy, and delish!

I am excited to try new recipes and figure out different things to eat over the next two weeks! Stay tuned for more low cal vegan ideas!

xo Meg