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One thing I've noticed about being vegan is that it's a lot harder to find options for desserts. This is because most sweets have milk or eggs. So I consulted my cousin, a dedicated vegan of three years, about what she ate for dessert. She said that eating vegan desserts has never been an issue for her and that I just have to learn how to substitute. Since then I have baked a ton of vegan desserts by simplifying substituting animal products with vegan options. My favourite recipe was a lemon cake I made.

Ingredients:
Frosting:

1/3 cup of lemon juice
1 3/4 cups of icing sugar
1/4 cup of blackberries (optional)

Cake:

2 cups sugar                                                      3/4 cup unsalted butter
4 eggs                                                                 3 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1 teaspoon grated lemon zest                        3 cups all purpose flour
1 tablespoon ground ginger                            1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon baking powder                              1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt                                              1 1/4 cups buttermilk

Directions:
Cake:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit and butter and cake pan.

2. Use an electric mixer to beat together sugar and butter until well blended. Add eggs one at a time and beat well.

3. Mix in lemon juice, lemon zest, and vanilla.

4. Mix flour, ginger, cinnamon, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in a sperate bowl.

5. Mix the dry ingredients into the butter mixture in parts alternating with the buttermilk.

6. Bake for 45 minutes or until a tester can be stuck into the centre of the cake and come out clean.

7. Cool for ten minutes before adding frosting.

Frosting:

1. Combine lemon juice and powdered sugar and mix until the icing reaches equal consistency.

2. Pour over cake and spread out evenly.

Photos:

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This vegan pasta dish was one of my favourite recipes even before I became vegan. I usually make it about once a month because I love it so much. I would recommend making this at home.

Ingredients:
1 pound of linguine (Or other type of pasta)                 6 tablespoons of olive oil
1 1/2 cups of mixed mushrooms (sliced)                     3 garlic cloves (diced)
1/4 cup nutritional yeast                                                  1 yellow onion (sliced)
1 green onion (sliced)                                                       1 teaspoon coarsely ground pepper

Directions:

1. Cook linguine (or paste of your choice) according to the directions on the box. When cooked reserve 3/4 cups of the cooking water and drain the pasta. Return the drained pasta to the pot.

2. Meanwhile, in a frying pan heat oil over medium heat. Add mushrooms, sweet onion and garlic cloves and cook until browned and tender.

3. Transfer the cooked mushrooms and onions into pot with drained pasta. Add reserved cooking water, nutritional yeast, and the pepper Mix until well combined.

4. Garnish with the green onions.

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Chile is another one of my favourite foods so, I had to find a way to make it vegan. Fortunately, the internet is full of vegan recipes. I tried a few and made some adjustments, this recipe was by far the best one. I will definitely make this again in the future.

Ingredients:
2 tablespoons of coconut oil                   1 large sweet potato (peeled and diced)
1 large onion                                               2 tablespoons of chili powder
4 cloves garlic, minced                             1/4 teaspoon salt
2 1/2 cups water                                        3 3/4 cups black beans
1 3/4 cups diced tomatoes                      4 teaspoons lime juice

Directions:

1. Heat oil over medium heat. Add sweet potato and onion and stir often, cook for about four minutes. Add garlic, chili powder, cumin, and salt and cook, stirring constantly, for 30 seconds. Add water and bring to a simmer. Cover, reduce heat to maintain a gentle simmer and cook until the sweet potato is tender, 10 to 12 minutes.

2. Add beans, tomatoes and lime juice; increase heat to high and return to a simmer, stirring often. Reduce heat and simmer until slightly reduced, about 5 minutes.

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I have learnt a lot over the last three weeks about being vegan. While initially it was difficult to change my patterns of food consumption and food preparation, (what I bought and what I prepared), I was able to adapt fairly quickly. The internet has a wealth of resources on vegan recipes which made the experience that much more accessible. Most importantly, the environmental benefits were much larger than I expected. The production of vegan foods requires significantly less water and land than animal products. It also produces way less greenhouse gas emissions. Although all of that is great, I also discovered that it's important to think where your food is coming from as well. Even if you're saving on GHG emissions by eating vegan, if you're food is coming from halfway across the world then you're still producing tons of emission to have your food shipped. Local sourcing needs to be considered and I don't think I did that as well as I could have.

Throughout this project I found that I did not bring the environmental change that I wanted. I had hoped to show people how much of a difference you can make by simply changing your diet. Instead, when I explained to others what I was doing I was mostly made fun of. I don't know why but there seems to be a lot of resentment towards vegans. A few of my vegan friends confirmed that I wasn't the only one who felt this way. I have yet to figure out what this could be about. Like all change, humans are resistant and maybe it's just a question of time before more people recognize the health and environmental benefits of veganism.

If I were to do this project again I would probably pick a different challenge. I would do something smaller like simply cutting down on the amount of meat you eat, or only using green transportation. I would do this because I think it would be easier to convince people to join me in the movement. This is simply because people are lazy and are more inclined to do something when it requires less effort. The reason I would want more people participating is because I believe that many people making a small change does more than one person making a large change. The health of our planet does not rest on the shoulders of one individual but on all of us.

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Over the past two days I have been increasingly starving. I have come to the conclusion that I am not eating properly and/or enough. So I decided to consult some vegans. I invited my only two vegan friends over for tea. Claire, an experienced vegan of two years, and Lucy, a beginner vegan of 3 months.

They both immediately agreed that I was not eating enough. Claire explained that vegan foods have a lower calorie density than animal products so when you eat vegan you should double your portions. You also have to get sufficient protein through the consumption of alternate foods like legumes, nuts, edamame, tofu and tempeh.

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I have finally figured out how to properly be vegan. Now that I have gotten used to it, meal preparation is much more efficient and I'm not constantly starving. With this extra time, I have decided to do some research on the environmental benefits of veganism. I focused primarily on greenhouse gas emissions. I searched up the GHG emissions of different products, and converted them all to emissions in kg per one pound of product. I was really shocked by the results. All of the animal products produced much larger amounts of GHGs than the vegan options. Not a single vegan option produced more. I put the data I came up with in a table below in case you're interested in my results.

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Pancakes are one of my favourite breakfast foods, so I was sad to discover that they aren't vegan. Luckily I soon learned there was an easy solution. Substitute the milk for almond milk. Just switching the milk to a vegan option saves seven gallons of water. So I used my usual recipe (but with almond milk) and it was delicious. Here's the recipe if you want to try it at home.

Ingredients:
1 1/4 cup of all-purpose flour                     2 tablespoons of sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons of baking powder           1/2 teaspoon of salt
1/4 teaspoon of cinnamon                         1 1/4 cup of milk
1 tablespoon of coconut oil   1 cup blueberries
Maple syrup

Directions:

1. In a large bowl mix together flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, and cinnamon.

2. In a separate bowl mix together milk and coconut oil.

3. Make a well inside the dry ingredients and mix in the wet ones. Add blueberries after and mix in gently.

4. Heat a griddle to medium heat and cooke each pancake for about 4 minutes on each side.

5. Top with blueberries and maple syrup.

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Okay, I know it's only been 4 days, but my family has given up on the vegan diet. They struggled with even identifying what was vegan and originally thought they would be fine with cheese and eggs and no meat. They reluctantly acknowledged that cheese and eggs came from animals. They have clearly discovered that veganism is a much larger commitment than they had anticipated and have left me to go it alone. Thanks for that. Despite this minor setback I refuse to give up.

I'll admit, the first few days have been a challenge to eat completely vegan. It is difficult to make properly balanced meals without the easy protein of dairy, meat or fish. And, I have quite often still been hungry after meals. Well, frankly, starving.

I have also had trouble convincing others of the benefits of being vegan. Most of the people I have talked to have made fun of me for being vegan instead of listening to the environmental benefits it can have. But, I have discovered many delicious recipes that I will be sharing on this blog. I have also learnt a lot about the environmental benefits of veganism and I am excited to share those as well.

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Over the next three weeks I have decided to become vegan. This means no meat or animal products of any kind. (This includes dairy and eggs.) I chose to do this because of the numerous environmental benefits that eating vegan can have. Raising livestock uses more water and land and produces much higher levels of greenhouse gas emissions than growing most other types of food. During my time as a vegan, I will explore how much of a difference becoming vegan can really make. As well, I will explore vegan cooking and share my discoveries for anyone who would like to attempt an experiment like mine.

I have convinced my family to join me in this experiment and we will honour our commitment to veganism until the fifth of June (21 days.) I think that we will find this to be a difficult task largely because we love everything that is not vegan: This includes bacon, steak, cheese, ice cream, milk, eggs etc.. But, for the cause of our planet, we will try our best.

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After my research into GHG emissions I was curious about other possible environmental benefits of veganism. I discovered that not only does it save significantly on water consumption but it also saves on land use.

Let's start with water. Water is used in much higher amounts to produce and maintain livestock than any other food. In fact, one person being vegan saves (on average) 400 500 gallons of water per year based on their food choices. To me, this was a shocking amount of water. I was also surprised to discover that I couldn't find a vegan food that used more water per pound of product than any animal product. (This can be seen in the graph below.)

Vegans also save on land use and use significantly less land than meat eaters and vegetarians. Land is saved in the production of food because it requires more land to raise livestock and produce animal products than it does other types of food. It was difficult to determine exact numbers as different sources said slightly different things. Although, it seems that vegans use about 2.5 times less land than vegetarians and 5 times less land than meat eaters.