VEGAN FRIDAY FAIL

I woke up on Friday morning and with no organic milk for my buckwheat cereal, I thought it would be a perfect opportunity to not only try out the vanilla Almond Breeze sitting in my fridge but also to give a day of vegan eating a try.

So the morning started out with a bowl of vanilla Almond Breeze and buckwheat cereal:Verdict: pretty good. It was sweet though. I think that next time I would buy the unsweetened vanilla version and add in some sliced bananas. Good way to start the vegan day!

Then lunch time rolls around and because I had prepared lunch the previous night, I had nothing to worry about in the morning. So say hello to my vegan-friendly baked potato with olive oil, salt and pepper:Along with a vegan-friendly pear and Kashi Dark Chocolate Coconut granola bar:And my vegan-friendly salad:Oh, what's that, eggs are not vegan-friendly? Yeah, tell me about it. A thought creeped into my head while I was enjoying what I thought was a vegan-friendly salad "wow, it's so easy to follow vegan diet" because I had completely forgotten that eggs are NOT vegan--duh!!! Anyway, the salad consisted of spring mix, fried plantain and three hard-boiled eggs. Yep, three. Oi. Clearly this salad was full of vegan failure.

Sean picked me up after work and we headed to P-Mall to get some soft-serve frozen yogurt made by us. Yeah, that's right...froyo a la Berryline, Pinkberry, Red Mango is finally here in Markham and it's name is Yutopia! Sean and I tried to access this place earlier this week but it was closed and so we decided to give it another go yesterday evening. Alas, it was closed--again! But all the toppings were out so maybe the person was on a break? Sean decided to get some curry fish balls in the meantime and by the time we were back at Yutopia, the shop was back open! Actually, the guy was opening the doors as we were approaching and joked about how we were waiting but whatevs.

After a read of the descriptions of different froyo, I decided to go with taro and original tart and here is my creation:Topped with strawberries, blueberries, pineapple and red bean.

Here is Sean's original tart froyo topped with strawberries, pineapple, kiwi and mochi (the looks of which skivved me out so I passed on it but then thought I should have gotten some):So we walked around Pacific Mall while enjoying our frozen yogurt but I know noticed a very big difference between Yutopia's froyo and the Pinkberry froyo Sean and I got to try while in NYC back in July: the froze yogurt itself. Yutopia's is more water-based. It's not as creamy as Pinkberry's and melted pretty quickly. It happened with the taro and original flavours so I know it wasn't isolated to just one flavour. To be honest, I wasn't really happy. I probably wouldn't go back to Yutopia.

Now the next froyo place to check out is Blushberry but since that's all the way in Toronto, it's probably going to be a while before I check it out. Hopefully the froyo is better than Yutopia's though :(

Dinner for the evening was Indian food with no images. I had mattar paneer with a naan and veggie biryani while Sean had chicken biryani. We both ended up with lots of leftovers to be eaten later. Mmm...leftover Indian food. So good!

Oh and I've decided to leave you with this imagery of gross, while walking through the aisles of P-Mall, which I normally detest (though recently I've seen more and more cosmetics shops though one was selling MAC cosmetics at discounted prices??!), Sean and I came across this beauty and we had to take a pic:A total WTF moment! Can someone please translate the Chinese writing at the top because we have no idea what the heck one would do with lamb placenta? Just saying that in my head makes me want to throw up in my mouth a little bit.

===

And with Friday's vegan failure recap done, I'm now looking out the window at what I would only describe as grey and hella windy. The wind woke me up before 9am this morning. Plans to go downtown have now been nixed for today and put on hold for tomorrow. It's not raining right now but I'm not in the mood for a trek downtown and hopefully the rain doesn't start until Monday. Revised plans for today now include the laundry and baking.

I SPENT HOW MUCH MONEY?!

$73 and change. Yeah, that's right...$73 on groceries at Sobey's. Damn their organic and/or all-natural aisles. But you know what, it's probably cheaper than going to Whole Foods and I was in the area so it saved me about two hours of commuting times. Here's a quickie (sort of) rundown of all the goods:

Let's start with meat I can eat:Clockwise from top left: proscuitto, drumsticks, frozen chicken nuggets and whole chicken. I was debating between my usual chicken fingers or chicken nuggets but the five-year-old in me won out and I decided to be all crazy and go with the nuggets this time. Too bad there's no non-HFCS-added sweet 'n sour sauce to enjoy those with.

Things I know I should not have bought but couldn't help it:Popcorn in sea salt and kettlecorn flavours from Popcorn, Indiana. This company makes amazing kettlecorn. It's freakishly addictive. I have to pour myself a serving in a bowl but then I just go back for more servings. I also make Sean hide the bag from me but then manage to get it off the top of the fridge twice before he realizes I'm taller than he thinks I am. Popcorn crack.

50/50 on what I should and should not have bought:On the left is what I should not have bought but I'm a sucker for new things in modern packaging. Metromint flavoured water. I got the lemonmint version. On the right is Newman's Own Oil & Vinegar Dressing. Despite being more than double the other brand that was currently on sale, I decided to get Paul's version because a) it's all-natural and b) contains no sulphites or ingredients I couldn't pronounce. I was a little bit iffy on the red wine vinegar as I'm currently staying away from all wine since it typically gives me a headache but we'll see if the small amount of dressing I use anyway, causes a reaction.

New-to-me items:Almond milk! I'm going to give this a try in lieu of milk in my cereal and oatmeal. Of course, this means oatmeal that I have at home so it'll mostly be oatmeal on the weekends since I don't have enough time to heat up almond milk at work and have time to eat it. I eat incredibly slow. Or I just eta oatmeal incredibly slow. Oh and Kashi bars. I wasn't really crazy about the three flavours I kept seeing everywhere (cherry dark chocolate, peanut peanut butter, seven whole grains and almonds) but then I saw all kinds of other flavours including trail mix, pumpkin pie, raspberry chocolate and the two you see above: Dark Chocolate Coconut and Dark Mocha Almond. I'm excited about the one with coconut--obviously.

Everyone needs produce!Sadly I didn't buy as much produce as I usually do. Actually it's probably okay that I didn't buy that much produce since none of it was organic--oops! But I bought a pound of spring mix, a pound of radishes, pre-cut watermelon (I'm a sucker for pre-cut watermelon--it screams summertime to me) and Liberte Greek yogurt. The yogurt came with a $1 off vendor coupon which was good because it didn't have a price tag listed and at $5, was pretty damn expensive! Good thing I passed on the $6 faux-meat burgers.

And that is what $73 will buy you. It was actually a bit of a shock when I saw the total and had to use my debit card since I didn't have that much cash on me. Saaaad! But at least the grocery store will see that someone is buying their all-natural products and maybe they'll start carrying more stuff. I tend to shop like this in the chain grocery stores (buying the natural/organic stuff rather than the traditional stuff) if the price difference is less than 50 cents for each product. I guess that with 18 different items, it all adds up! Of course, some of this stuff I hadn't intended to purchase and it'll last me a while (ie: all the meat, granola bars, almond milk, dressing) but then other purchases will not last as long and were actually a little more expensive than I was used to paying (ie: popcorn).

Oh well...now it's time to go eat my purchases.