Day 1 Recap: It Begins...

After reading Jody and Mike’s posts, it is clear that I am easily the least prepared for this competition. My game plan going in was to stock my house with vegan friendly items in the same way as the other lads, however upon waking up Sunday morning with a slight hangover, I opted to spend most of the day on the couch watching TV. Since global warming is in full effect here in the Washington DC area, I did managed to get up for an hour to shoot baskets (thank you very much Al Gore). The hour long shoot-around expended way too much energy and I returned home where I once again found the comforting embrace of my couch. On a couple of occasions, I considered getting up and going to the store, but the gravitational pull inside my condo seemed to be abnormally strong (note to self: could this be another symptom of global warming? Need to bring this up with Al Gore at the next pancake dinner.). Ultimately, I did venture back outside but it was not to stock up on vegan food items, but rather to see “Charlie Wilson’s War” (which was very good). As a result, the only vegan items in my house are a couple of rapidly aging potatoes, some “tater tots,” rice, a can of refried beans and a can of baked beans (I need to double check their vegan status before consumption). As I said, I’m rather ill-prepared to say the least.

Here’s a little known fact about myself: I have a terrible diet. Health nuts claim that the key to a healthy diet is eating four or five small and balanced meals a day. I would say that on average, I eat only one large meal a day, with maybe a sandwich or box of pizza rolls thrown in there for good measure. The timing of my one meal typically varies – sometimes I’ll eat a big lunch (say a half pound burger at Fuddruckers), but then I’ll have just a bowl of soup for dinner, and maybe some popcorn later. Or maybe I’ll skip lunch altogether, and eat a box of Mac & Cheese topped with a can of chili (estimated caloric intake ~1,000,000.4). My point is that, while this unholy diet may be slowing my metabolism down to a crawl (thereby increasing the size of my ass), it puts me in an excellent spot for the vegan challenge.

Day 1:
9:00 am – Cup of Coffee (no milk, no sugar)
12:00 pm – Lunch was provided as part of a noon meeting. Fortunately for me, the lunch consisted of two very unappetizing pizzas (undercooked, over sauced, etc). Just looking at that culinary debacle suppressed my appetite for several hours.
1:15 pm – I politely accepted a few potato chips that my boss offered (contents: potato, sunflower oil, salt)
4:45 pm – 2 apples
5:30 pm – A bag of frozen penne arrabiata from Trader Joe’s (certified Vegan and very tasty)
9:15 pm – 2 vegan “mint chocolate” Oreo cookie looking things (which tasted surprisingly good)
10:30 pm – A bowl of popcorn (popped in my own popper using just vegetable oil and a little bit of salt. Actually, I used way too much vegetable oil to compensate for the lack of butter, and felt a bit sick afterwards)

For me, Day 1 came and went without too much of a challenge. I was able to keep my daily routine more or less consistent and didn’t feel as though I was missing out on too much. If I can keep up this trend, I should be in good shape for the competition. I finally made it out to Trader Joe’s, and now have an arsenal of vegan dinners queued up at home. I am I am slightly concerned about the lunch situation however. The only real option for me is the salad bar in the small café downstairs – but that can get old very fast (especially with out any dressing or cheese). Add to the fact that I can see Fuddruckers and McDonald’s from my office window, and I fear that the temptations will be doing more than just singing “My Girl” (was that too obscure?).

~Saps