Vegan before 6

My sister was on Mark Bittman's Vegan Before 6 diet and so of course I had to do it too. There are these 10 pounds I want to lose. I have lost 10 and I need to lose 10 more.

I had heard of VB6 before. Except when I last heard of it I was working pretty much 9 to 5 and it is difficult to be vegan before 6 o'clock under those circumstances. You do not have time to plan perfectly and if you get hungry you are in trouble. You cannot just go to the kitchen to chow down a few more cubes of tofu.

I do the no-meat-on-Friday thing year-round and I was never able to plan well as far as packing my Friday lunch for work. And on Fridays when my stomach was growling, that was when my mind would go to Mark Bittman and VB6.

"Yeah, right," I would say to myself. That is a condescending phrase I picked up from Leonard Pennario.

However, now things are different!

My schedule is more flexible and so this diet is no big deal. It actually reminds me of how I used to eat a long time ago, before I got married and there was this other person in my house who insists on meat. May I add I weighed less then, too. I know it is very possible to eat meat responsibly but still.

Vegan Before 6 is also very similar to this traditional Catholic fast I did during Lent a few years ago. I did get through that OK, now that I think about it, despite office hours.

However as I discovered then, you do have to plan.

I enjoy a game, and I do spend too much time thinking about this because there is nothing like a new diet, so full of promise. I made veggie burgers out of pinto beans from a Moosewood recipe. Ah, here it is!

These beanie burgers are golden. Add some ketchup and ballpark mustard and your mind accepts them as the real thing. It is like what I have read about Mock Apple Pie. I have not had that but I guess what happens is, you use zucchini instead of apples and as long as you add the appropriate spices, nobody knows the difference.

Well, at church they would probably know the difference. At our after-Mass coffee hour I announced I was on the diet.

"Vegan before 6," I said brightly.

And these smart-mouth guys in our congregation are laughing at me.

""So you can eat meat now," one of them told me. "Vegan before 6 a.m."

Hahahahaa!

Why didn't I think of that?