As you may recall from the last installment of the Vegan Diaries, I found a fantastic vegan brownie at Little Atlas, but the cupcake I tried left much to be desired. Undaunted in my quest to find an indulgent vegan cupcake, I made the trek from NoHo to the Lower East Side to sample a few sweet creations at BabyCakes Bakery. Upon bringing them back to the office, I offered to share them with a co-worker, who simply stared at me blankly, then turned and walked away. Another co-worker, thus far the only one willing to share in my vegan experiences, agreed to split them with me. We tasted the chocolate, lemon, and carrot cupcakes (pictured) and agreed that they were surprisingly delicious. Through some miracle of science, BabyCakes has managed to create a relatively moist, flavorful cupcake (the lemon was my favorite) using no dairy, eggs or refined sugar. I think I’d eat these even if I wasn’t a vegan.

So, problem solved on the baked goods front. Feeling quite lazy last night, I heated up some frozen vegan enchiladas (Amy’s brand). Today, having run out of veggie burgers to pack for lunch, I decided to make a vegan chicken sandwich. Quickly perusing the ingredients on the side of the box of veggie chicken tenders, though, I was deeply disappointed to see that they contained egg. So, it suffices to say that I’ll be exploring vegan lunch options near my office today.

Now that I’ve been a vegan for three whole days, I’ve been fielding a lot of questions on whether or not I feel different. The honest answer? Not really. Maybe it’s just because I wasn’t a big meat-eater to begin with. I am, however, becoming a lot more aware of what I’m eating. Having to scrutinize every ingredient label will do that to a person, but I don’t think that’s a bad thing. At this point, my biggest fear is that I’m going to screw up somehow and inadvertently eat something that’s not vegan, so the obsessive label-reading is a must. I admit that I get a little thrill every time I read the ingredients list for a given food and discover that I can eat it. Yesterday, a co-worker menacingly held out a jar of white chocolate peanut butter from Peanut Butter & Co., predicting that I wouldn’t be able to try it. I grabbed the jar, scanned the ingredients, and triumphantly pronounced it vegan-it didn’t even contain refined sugar! It was pretty good, too.

-Elise Stern

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