Sooooo sushi is not vegan. Sushi is not vegetarian. Simple reason - fish is not a vegetable. It's a living thing.  However, I love sushi. It is one of the reasons I haven't been a strict vegetarian ever since giving up eating every other animal. Those were easy.  Soon after giving up beef, pork and chicken, I couldn't even stand the smell of them cooking.  Bacon is the worst.  I'm not saying that's necessarily good, because you still have to live in a society that is largely meat-eating, but for me there was just no going back.

With fish, it's just different. One - I can't really communicate with fish the way I can (in my mind) with other animals.  So I guess I've explained that part away.  But also, I would starve for protein when I went without eating fish for a long time.  I would run out of vegetarian protein and start grabbing carbs (usually bread) and that just made me feel sluggish and uncomfortable and mostly just unhappy.  So I went back for fish... Sushi... Fish tacos... Grilled fish for dinner...

This is why this step of giving up that last animal is hard for me.  So last night I went out for a farewell sushi dinner.  I had sashimi to be exact. And because it was my last (or so I hope) I would like to pay my respects to the yellow tail, red snapper and salmon I consumed.  They were delicious.

This morning I had a crumpet with *vegan* cream cheese. I was skeptical because I normally don't like imitation anything, but I have to keep an open mind since I'll have to develop a new array of foods I can live off.  Sooooo the verdict - it was pretty decent AND didn't have an endless list of ingredients (a scary sign that it consists only of artificial things, even if vegan).  Even better, it was from Trader Joe's (read - accessible and affordable).

I even created a very quick and easy vegan snack - peanut butter and banana sandwich!  I don't like the taste of bananas and I don't like how peanut butter sticks to the roof of my mouth, but I ate it. I got energy. I moved on.

I feel like for me it's going to be trial and error like this.  But I'm excited. I'm looking forward to tomorrow.