It's rough for vegans

Doug and I decided to improve our diets by eliminating sugar and coffee. I'm trying not to have too much dairy. Turns out it's much harder than one would think. 

The coffee part is okay, since we're avid tea drinkers, but I do miss the smell and taste of coffee. I'm also having trouble finding a warm, nursing drink with a little body and a little sweetness that doesn't have much caffeine in it. Or milk. 

For the last couple of days I've been experimenting to find a warm get-up drink for the mornings with a sweetener other than sugar. De-caf coffee with light molasses is just bad. Black tea with molasses a bit more bearable. Coffee with chickory and molasses was horrible. Green tea tastes good and keeps me going, but I want it to be a little thicker somehow. Chai with rice milk was the best by far. Black tea with honey has been a longtime favorite of mine, but for every one cup of coffee with milk and sugar, I want three cups of black tea with honey. It makes me wonder if I should just hit the coffee with sugar and milk and be okay with it. Unfortunately, my body doesn't dig it on a regular basis, so maybe I'll have to alternate somewhat.

As for meals, we've been pretty good about greens/veggies or grains at every meal. Now that we're in the sweetest part of the season when summer fruits are just as plentiful as the fall offerings, we're enjoying fresh corn, peaches, chard, kale, beets, carrots and looking forward to the leeks popping up, squash and seemingly endless potatoes. Getting all these healthy yummies into the bellies of our little people is proving much harder, but at least we're trying to offer it all to them. 

The air is cooler, the rain coming faster. We're changing over into another season. School is beginning. I'm ready to start something new myself, but having trouble getting into gear. My bramble of creativity is still atangle inside, my go-go juice is to be determined and I'm trying to gather energy to unravel it all into a cohesive something.