monastic aspirations, pt. 1

For someone who is not remotely religious, and, has somewhat fallen off the spiritual wagon in the past year or so (for reasons of not having had anyone to talk Eastern philosophy with in a long time, not bothering to re-read favorite texts from said philosophy, and increasingly taking on more of a cold, mathematical view of the universe) I find I am oddly enough continuing to develop "monastic aspirations".

Someday I would really love to go vegan. I realize, however, that such an attempt would probably be doomed to failure because:

1. I can't eat soy, and not a lot of commercial foods aimed at vegans use sources of protein other than that. I would probably spend a lot of time in the kitchen as a mad scientist, trying to extract protein from other plant sources. (Actually, this doesn't sound so bad.) I've heard you can do it with wheat gluten.

...and then more earthly whining...

2. I like seafood.
3. I love yogurt (both for taste and protein) and cheese.

I can however, continue to iterate my diet towards a more vegan-esque makeup. The current thing I am working on jettisoning is milk. I don't really need milk. I use it in cereal and baking. These uses can withstand alternative substances. I've already written about how the rice milk from Full Circle pretty much sucks, and today I've got some more positive news. I finally found the little repository of alternative dairy-like beverages at Schnuck's yesterday. And was totally stoked to find they had almond milk. (They also had a few brands of soy and rice milk--even Rice Dream brand, which is, as far as rice milk goes, pretty good--but I am giving up on those two for obvious reasons.) They had one brand of almond milk, so I got a quart each of the two versions: original and vanilla. I have already gone all the way through the vanilla one. This stuff is good. Evidently they make oat milk, too. I am so trying it (even if I must trek to Urbana or even buy it online...)

I have more to write, specifically regarding grad school and love, but these will have to be writings for other times. I've got a lot to do today and should get to working on all of it...