Run Plant Based

Formerly The Raw Project - Running on a Healthy Vegan Diet

Kale & A New Cutting Board

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I had an upsetting vegan experience at work yesterday. For the last 2 months, we’ve been working in overdrive at work for a new project start up and the department responsible threw an appreciation luncheon for everyone that worked hard on it. I knew Chinese food was going to be served, so I didn’t worry about a lack of vegan options – there’s usually a tofu dish or at least a veggie only dish, right? When I got to the end of the line ready to load my plate with the buffet-style dishes, I found to my horror there was no vegan options. None! Everything had meat in it – shrimp stir fry, pork fried rice, orange chicken, and a beef stir fry. The only vegan option was white rice and that’s not lunch! Besides, it probably wasn’t vegan either. The co-worker I was chatting with sweetly suggested I eat around the meat. Heh, no thanks! I just put my plate back and quietly left still starved and ended up driving to pick up a real lunch missing the appreciation speeches. It wasn’t that there just wasn’t any vegan options, there were hardly any veggies at all, lots of meat-heavy dishes with some green sprinkled in. Come on, this is freaking California!

On a more positive note, I’m loving how much better RunKeeper works on my iPhone 4S, the GPS syncs up to good signal strength many times faster and no distance spikes yet.

Over the weekend I enjoyed plenty of leisurely cups of Trader Joe’s Pumpkin Spice Coffee with fresh hemp milk, so much nicer than having to chug two cups before rushing out the door early for work on weekdays.

I also picked up a new cutting board since some of mine are looking ratty after lots of use, an Epicurean Cutting Board.

Being dishwasher safe, eco friendly, and made in the USA are what really attracted me to it. Also that it was reasonably priced, looked like wood and not cheap plastic, but not as high maintenance as wood can be.

It did great for the first use creating a raw pumpkin pie Sunday, the board picked up a few knife marks, but that’s to be expected. I loved just being able to put it in the dishwasher after because pumpkin guts can be a sticky, slimy mess.

And I was thrilled to find dino kale starters at Whole Foods over the weekend. Last winter I discovered that kale, chard, and broccoli thrived in my garden despite the freezing temps, gray days, and loads of rain. It’s the perfect season to grow kale here because I don’t have to worry about watering or pests.

I planted the cuties right away and so far so good.

I’ve already transformed one entire garden bed to three different types of kale and broccoli.

And will probably convert another garden bed as soon as the winter squash plants start dying off. But it looks like that won’t be happening anytime soon, I’ve good about 20 squashes growing now!

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Comments

  1. I would have been ticked, too, about them putting meat in every single dish. I am veggie not vegan and “eating around” things is not appetizing. The flavor of the meat flavors…everything. It’s like people who tell me to eat around onions. Umm, sure. Doesn’t really work that easily.
    Sorry you had to go hungry, miss the speeches, and deal. Ugh!

    That cutting board is great. Mine are beyond ratty. Also carving something like that pumpkin…do you find your knife to be big enough? Do you carve in sort of a multi-stage fashion? Hacking and rotating? lol

    • True on eating around meat and there was so much of it that there wouldn’t be much else to eat!

      For the pumpkin I used a 10″ chefs knife and it was big enough. I cut the pumpkin in half first, seeded it, then into little wedges that the skin could easily be cut off of.

  2. Seems like that should never happen in California, right? Unfortunately both my husband and I have had just this kind of experience too, right here in “vegan capital” Portland! And my husband’s last bad experience was at a board retreat for a very progressive organization to boot. Some people just don’t think I guess?

    • So true, I think one the sales guys ordered the food and probably just got tubs of what he liked not thinking of the diverse group it was supposed to feed. :-(

  4. That has happened to me too. It happened even when I asked to organizer if there would be any vegan dishes because I’m vegan, she said yes, and there was nothing. I was really hungry and real pissed. One of the kitchen staff ran away for a few minutes and came out with a vegan sandwich and fresh fruit, luckily. I’m sorry about you incident, it really can be frustrating.

    The winter garden is such a good use of the garden beds, and why not? I’m assuming that wouldn’t work here in Chicago though

  5. Definitely would have been frustrated, too. At my work they are always very conscious about vegetarian/vegan options. There is always at least one dish catered to it.

    Great job on the garden! I would love to have one, but last time I set up to grow lettuce, my cats started using it as a litter box. *sigh* need to fix that issue.