Going vegan......old style?!

SplashWellyKid

Hi all, lots of interesting points & recipes here! I've been vegan for eight years or so & was veggie for 12 years before that, so here's a long post of thoughts & comments that occurred to me as I was reading through the thread today:

- The Vegan Family House - nice site crammed with simple & tasty recipes, cookery books & useful links, with a chatty monthly newsletter.

- Animal Free Shopper - a really handy pocket-sized book which tells you what everyday items are vegan. Great when wandering round the supermarket or for hunting out new ideas. Either buy a copy (eg http://www.amazon.co.uk/Animal-Free-Shopper-Vegan-Society/dp/0907337317) or use the Vegan Society's online search: http://www.animalfreeshopper.com/html/
(recipes do change but it does help a lot with the label reading. Co-op & Sainsbury's are the best supermarkets for labelling their stuff vegan - Co-op being expecially good for wines & beers.)

- There's no need to feel excluded when eating or or holidaying abroad. Try Vegetarian Guides for their excellent books covering Britain, Europe & various other places. For anyone living in or visiting London, you can't beat Vegetarian London, with over 140 veggie & vegan eateries & loads more wholefood shops, including many great bargain buffets tucked away down side streets (eg under £3 for Indian buffets & £5 for Tai/Chinese ones). There's also a Vegan Passport in many languages, so you can just point to the appropriate phrase explaining what you can & cannot eat!

- Viva! (travelling Incredible Veggie Show), Yaoh (Bristol & Brighton), Animal Aid (Xmas Wthout Cruelty) & many local groups (eg http://www.vegancampaigns.org.uk/) run - often free! - vegan festivals round the country, which is a great chance to sample new items, such as Scheese/Cheezly; meat substitutes (Redwoods Foods & Fry's) & Plamil.(choc, mayo, soya milk) etc & usually buy them at bargain prices. Don't forget to pre-register for the International Food & Drink Exhibition for more freebies, especially if you attend on the last day when everyone is packing up & keen to foist their wares on you - you'll have food to last a couple of weeks!

- All the main veggie & vegan charities also have great starter packs full of recipes & plenty of online resources - as well as the above, look at PETA & The Vegan Society. Check their websites & members' magazines for regular competitions, special offers & giveaways, especially of new products.

- Ethnic shops are a great source for bulk-buying cheap staple items (eg Asian shops for rice, pulses, spices, chick pea flour (gram); Oriental for tofu, noodles, five-spice, frozen soya beans (endame), miso, seaweed etc). Look out for interesting veg & other unusual ingredients. Don't forget your local markets - plenty of cheap fruit & veg, especially near closing time.

- Soya milk - different brands work differently. I've been told two tips for coffee to help prevent curdling:
1) Add a little cold water first before the boiling water.
2) Let it cool a little & stir well all the time while adding the soya milk.

- As well as trying the different 'fake' cheeses, like Scheese, Cheezly & Tofutti, which all come in a variety of flavours, the nutritional yeast flakes (eg in tubs from Energita) work well in stews, soups, 'cheesy' sauces & pizzas (sprinkle directly onto the tomato base before adding your veg).

- To make a 'Mr Whippy' style ice-cream: freeze slices of bananas; add to blender with a small amount of non-dairy milk & blitz (adjust milk to make the right consistency, add broken chocolate, fruit etc for different flavours).

Good luck in starting out, especially those who've been tempted to try veganism a second time!:T

Splash

O.W.E.I

As it will soon be pancake day, this recipe works a treat:

250 g Wholemeal flour, self raising
500 ml Soya milk
1 Tbs Lemon or lime juice
Salt pinch
Olive oil

(quantities are not set in stone - cooking is not a science...)

Mix flour, salt, milk and juice, then whisk
Chill for about an hour
Heat oil and fry half a cup full at a time (depending on pan size) until starting to brown
Keep warm in oven separated by greaseproof paper whilst deciding on filling

This makes enough for two of us and leaves a couple for my dinner the next day!

Enjoy.. .

kim_ley

Well I've been veggie since watching Jamie saves our bacon (the pig slaughter) so not that long but I haven't relapsed at all nor have I wanted to the thought of my once beloved bacon butty now only makes me want to cry!!! I've been thinking of going vegan so have been having the odd vegan meal here and there but I'm waiting until I've finished breastfeeding to go the whole hog. I'll be checking this thread all the time... Best of luck x

Only_Girl_in_the_House

Kim_ley, I breastfed 3 children for 2 years each (not all at the same time) and was 100% vegan the whole time. It's a perfectly healthy diet for breasfeeding.

star2007

Following on from the pancake post above :cool: ... I've just finished polishing off a batch of vegan pancakes

Ingredients:

1 cup of chick pea flour
1 cup of regular plain flour
2 tea sp of baking powder
pinch of salt
Soya milk, enough to make a runny-ish batter (4 or 5 cups?)
About 1 oz of veg marge, melted

Add the milk to the dry ingredients, whisking to get rid of lumps. Pour in the melted marge and whisk. Proceed as per regular pancakes. Had mine with chopped pecans, sliced bananas & maple syrup.

This was enough to make me a huuuuuuuge toad in the hole last night in my remoska (added some sliced raw carrots, halved brussels & onion segments to make up for the deficiency of sausages), and about 4 pancakes tonight.

I think chick pea flour is my new best friend, I can't seem to sing its praises highly enough!

suep

Ive been catching up with this thread over the last few days and have really enjoyed it. I have been veggie for 5 years and am thinking about becoming vegan so this thread is really helping me, I've managed to stick to vegan meals for the last few days until I went out for lunch with friends today and ended up having jacket potato and cheese, there wasnt anything else I could have and I didnt like to ask them for a plain potato, they only seemd to have butter and I didnt think Id like it dry anyway, but I will try it next time I go there.
Im not going to let this slip up stop me,tomorrow is another day and all that. Thankyou Twinkle for starting this thread.

twinklesmum_2

I am horrified by the bee/honey debacle, although I always try to buy local/organic etc - are small-scale beekeepers mean to their bees? And if you use sugar/syrup instead, might there not be human rights issues involved in their production? I also have this worry about soya - as well as the health scares, isn't most soya mass-produced in America using very dodgy farming practices which are far more harmful to the land/environment long term? I think I would rather get some protein from organic eggs laid by 'happy hens' I know personally which in turn fertilise the soil to grow happy free-range carrots? (I'm sure someone will kick my !!! for saying that but Twinkle knows the agonies I go through trying to shop/produce food ethically/organically/economically).
We are, however, very proud of our Twinkle's new project - especially as her appetite for red meat used to horrify me (sorry sweetie :A )

frugalmumof4

The soya beans i buy for making our own milk have been grown in brazil and are organic and fair trade.

twinkle_star_2

Yes, that really is my mum...:o. Hello!:rotfl:

Bakeacake

Hi, Just thought I'd join in. Have been loving all the useful ideas. We are not strict vegetarians, but try to eat lots of healthy pulses, grains etc. and cheaply. We like to order some stuff in bulk with a group of friends and neighbours ever couple of months- saves money and packaging and is sociable. Suma are a very good firm, a workers cooperative, and have just set up online ordering. They deliver on particular days of the week depending where you live, or if you live near Elland West Yorks you can collect by appointment. You have to be careful to choose things you know you'll eat though. Other wholefood suppliers probably offer similar wholesale possibilities.