I have now survived an entire week as a vegan! And to be honest, it’s actually not been that hard. I have worked most of the days since my last post, and as I work near Waterloo, there’s a Marks and Sparks, a Tesco, a Sainsbury’s and a Pret to choose from, all of which have a decent selection of vegan options. We’ve had some unusually hot weather (which I am rather glad coincided with my enforced break from running) and I thought I would be longing for ice cream but actually I’ve rediscovered water-and-sugar type ice lollies, which are marginally healthier, and even treated myself to some soya based ice cream (I am steering clear of anything made from coconuts) with fresh fruit and vegan chocolate syrup.
On Sunday, however, came a bigger challenge: a Vegan Pub Trip. And not just a couple of pints in the local, a proper all day piss up in the sunshine. I am well aware that when drunk that I often make questionable decisions, which quite frequently involve food. There have, for example, been occasions when I have woken up to find a half eaten doner kebab on my bedroom floor.
We went to a pub in Brixton called the Canova Hall which is some proper hipster joint where the toilets have no proper taps at the sink, just water gushing from brass pipes on the wall. Of course, there is some correlation between hipsterification and veganness, so sure enough, there were several vegan options on the menu. However, they lost points immediately by substituting the tomato ketchup we had specifically ordered with our chips for a spicy sausage sauce. The barmaid did at least proudly announce what she had done before any of us had eaten any.
I had a vegan pizza and I have to say it was rather good. It had mushrooms, rocket (too much rocket, why does everyone assume vegans love green stuff?), pine nuts, chillis and (not enough) cashew cheese. I am pretty sure all the beer I drank was vegan, as it is only clear drinks that are filtered through fishguts (ugh), but I can’t be 100% sure as it was hard enough trying to order something and get it to turn up without dissecting its ingredients.
Miraculously I was either too full up or too drunk to even think about food on the way home so I woke up without any foreign objects in the house, and a raging hangover. My first thought was to order pizza but then I remembered that pizza has cheese on it and cheese makes Sad Cows so I searched for “vegan pizza delivery”. Apparently Pizza Hut does vegan cheese but only if you eat in which was obviously no good as I was too hungover to get out of bed. A local place called Pizza E17 does no less than two vegan pizzas but this is a prime example of the weird arse toppings they think vegans like to eat. Why is the vegan pizza not the same as the vegetarian one but with vegan cheese? Honestly, there is no place for butternut squash on a pizza. Or rosemary. And there is no place for courgettes ON THIS EARTH, they should be BANNED. I gave up at this point and went to the local park where they were having a fair, and to my delight they had not only an entirely vegan food stand selling fritters and cakes, but a hotdog stand (“Walthamstow Dogs”)that had a vegan option with lots of really nice vegan toppings.
I ate everything in sight and fell asleep in the sun.
My legs have stopped hurting, so I might go for a little run tomorrow.
7:07 