Summer’s been so busy and so beautiful (no wild fires and
fair air, for a change – yay!) that I even forgot what the mountains look like
with snow on their tops. It’s been toasty, but we needed some heat. I needed
some heat, to charge my bones for the long winter coming.
One of the things we do in the summer (and spring and
fall, too) is camp. I used to look so much forward to eating while camping: hot
dogs, especially (mine were always turkey, fat free), baked beans, bagel and (fat
free) cream cheese with turkey bacon for breakfast. Yum!
But since lately I have been eating only a vegan diet,
this year’s been the first time when I camped on all veggies. I was a little
nervous, really, because I did not know if I could stay “full” for two days,
while hiking and doing stuff around camp on simply … plants and fruits. But it
worked out nicely – as you can see in some of these pictures.
I have also found some new products, as you’ll see, that
are natural and “gunk free” (I hope! – as much as we can trust the labels, of
course) and that taste like real food.
For dinner one night, I had baked beans, with polenta (which I made at home and packed in a plastic ware dish) with fresh corn on the cob, grilled on the camp fire.
For lunch, I had a sandwich made with vegan home made bread (thanks to my husband!), Boulder Canyon potato chips (see below) and tomato salad (I cut the tomatoes and onions at home and put them in separate dishes, then mixed them together with salt and pepper at the camp site - you don't want to mix them the day before, because they juice too much and they lose the flavor).
This was a new find for me - the Boulder Canyon brand products - all natural and they are so delicious - nothing but potato taste in that bag.
For "on the trail" snacks I had raisins and fresh cherries. What else says "summer" more loudly than cherries?!
Another night for dinner, we cooked all these veggies (fresh peppers, Brussels sprouts, potatoes, onions with some curry powder, salt and pepper) in aluminum foil on the open fire, and we mixed it into our vegan baked beans. Then, we had leftover corn on the cob along with it, for some comfort additional starch. It was so filling and delicious!
I decided that as far as food goes, you’re only limited
by your imagination in how you cook it, and by your palate in what you choose
to eat. But the options are there, and are plenty! My rule of thumb is: if
there is a people under the sun that live happily and fully with only a plant
and fruit based diet(and there are lots of peoples just like that, in countries
where life expectancy is even longer than ours), that should be enough testimony
for me that humans don’t need meat to live.
Although for an FH patient nutrition is only a very small
fraction of what helps manage our
disease (usually, the bigger role is held by drugs), I feel much better when I
don’t consume animal products. I am not a chemist, or a biologist, but I am
very much in tune with my body. And overall, my body has been the happiest,
lightest, less prone to pains since I have switched my diet this way. And every
day, I am surprised by all the new options we have out there, including when we
pack for a whole weekend in the middle of the woods, somewhere.
I will say one caveat for all the options we have out
there: I cannot eat anything with soy, because of a personal intolerance to it,
and I have found all the “meat substitutes” out there to be absolutely gross
for my taste! However, once you really tell yourself there is no such thing as “meat”
in your diet, you’ll stop looking for it, or for anything to replace it. And,
to me, I find meat less appetizing now, after not eating it for 8 months. So,
there is no missing it, at all. And I have never been an avid dairy consumer
anyway, so I guess the “switch” has been easier for me. I am lucky!
Enjoy what’s left in the summer, all, and happy eating, wherever
you are!
