WHO THE HELL PUTS MILK IN VEGETABLE STOCK?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!
Ahem.
Well it all came very close to falling at the first hurdle I have to say but I am nearing the end of day one veganating without a slip. No thanks to you, Tesco Everyday Basics Vegetable Stockcubes. Whilst banging together my lunch for today I found myself having a quick nose through the ingredients list on this seemingly innocent product. Yup. Vegetable stock. You know, cooked down vegetables that you condense then use to flavour your curries or grains or soups. Somehow when I bought this I assumed it would be, well, you know, just condensed vegetable stock- comprising of vegetables, salt, that kind of thing. In my humble opinion, it’s a bit naughty to go lacing it with lactose- maybe not the height of tragedy my life has seen but I had to throw out my couscous and start again, and it pissed me off! This was an eye opener though, and not just because I came carelessly close to destroying my own challenge before it had really started.
In my normal, animal product consuming life, I’m not a fan of milk. I don’t like the taste of it. I also don’t like the allergenic qualities it has and I really don’t like the tons of crap that ends up in a standard pint of cow juice. Hormones, pesticides, antibiotics, it doesn’t bare thinking about. So my milk consumption isn’t huge, I opt for goats cheese a lot of the time and strictly use organic milk and yoghurt at home. Or at least I thought I did. It’s not really occurred to me before now how much stealth milk I’m taking in, with all the aforementioned nasties to boot. I spent ten minutes going through the bread shelf in Marks today to try and find one that didn’t have cows milk listed as an allergen- even though there was no milk in the ingredients list. ‘Manufacturing processes’ apparently. I am not amused. Google is not helping this by highlighting literally hundreds of allegedly non dairy food and drink items which actually contain milk. Ick.
But apart from that near miss, a fine day! Bran flakes with apple juice to start, ryvitas and peanut butter elevenses, a fine potato and aubergine curry with milk-free cous cous lunch and some terkiyaki veg crackers in the previously allotted kit kat hour. I even braved black coffee from the work machine and it was tolerable. More or less. Current down points are that I have consumed my usual calorie allowance for the day before dinner is even a concept and am contributing to the green house gas-ozone layer problem much more than I was yesterday. On the plus, five a day will be nearer twelve a day by the time I’ve whizzed up some soup for dinner. Hurrah!
Food. Boom. 