January = Vegan

As part of my new years resolution, I've decided to spend the entire month of January eating vegan--a decision I'm very, very happy with.

I've dabbled with veganism this past summer and I never felt better. I had tons of energy and woke up feeling great each morning. I actually got to a point where the smell of dairy repulsed me. I quit after Dave's family visited for over a week and I needed to cook more family friendly meals.

I've been vegetarian for 8 months with hopes of doing the vegan thing again on a more regular basis. It took reading Skinny Bitch over the holidays to remind me again why I wanted to try to eat a more vegan diet. It's a good book--really more of a vegan manifesto than a diet book. It is an incredibly easy read...a dumbed down version of Eating Animals or The China Study or Omnivore's Dilemma. My favorite thing about it is it's been able to reach a broad audience who normally would never pick up a book about veganism and helped them see the health and environmental hazards of a meat-heavy diet.

One of the people it reached was my brother, Sean. While making an epic trek from Tampa, FL, to Missoula, MT, together this Christmas, I lent him my copy because he had nothing to read. By the time we had landed for our layover in Minneapolis he was overly curious to see if eating vegan would help him lose a couple unneeded pounds he put on while finishing up his degree in Computer Engineering (and graduating with honors!)

So we started a bet on Fatbet.net that we'd be vegan for two weeks (although I'm planning the whole month). If I make it, Sean will buy me the African thumb piano I wanted but didn't get for Christmas. If he makes it, I will give him money equal to that of the thumb piano. If we fail we have to donate $50 to Kiva.org and still reward the winner if they go the full two weeks.

I was really surprised to see such a positive response on Facebook when I first posted about this personal "challenge" (challenge may not be the correct word; it's actually been really fun and easy). I received many requests that I blog about it so here I am. I'll try to get as many recipes on here as I can. Stay tuned!