Going vegan- the final word

So I am definitely no longer vegan. Over the past couple of weeks I have eaten some fish and a reasonable amount of cheese, but there was no huge animal protein blow out. In fact it was actually quite hard to stop being vegan. I never intended for this to be a permanent change of eating habits, but once I'd done my thirty days I was quite disinclined to switch back to pescatarian eating. I really can't rationalise this, but somehow without the 'rules' of veganism I just felt an immense sense of confusion about what I should eat. Anyway, after a period of readjustment I am now enjoying the delights of (moderate amounts of) Quorn sausages and halloumi cheese. Somewhat randomly I am still consuming a variety of non-diary milks and yogurts, mainly because they are quite nice.

So to round up these posts, here are couple of things I made in the last week or so. I was inspired by the Waitrose lentil and cauliflower salad to make my own version. It wasn't an exact flavour match, but it was damn tasty nevertheless. I ate this over several days with an assortment of courgette bhajis, aubergine stew and pesto. The bhajis were also excellent, if I do say so myself- slices of courgette, dipped in a gram flour, self-raising flour, and black onion seed batter, and then fried in hot oil- resulting in a crispy but vaguely nutritious side dish. I've included my cauliflower recipe below, but do adjust to suit your own tastes.

Cauliflower and lentil salad (enough for 2 as a generous main meal, or 4 as a side dish)

1 small cauliflower, cut into florets
1 medium red onion, finely chopped
2 spring onions, sliced
1 red pepper, chopped into small pieces
3 medium cloves garlic, crushed
1-2 tsp ground cumin
0.5 tsp chilli flakes
0.5 tbslp sun-dried tomato puree
1 tsp fennel seeds
390g tin of cooked green lentils, drained
Generous squeeze of lemon juice
Salt and pepper to taste
2-3 tblsp olive oil
Small handful coriander leaves, roughly chopped

Cook the cauliflower florets in the olive oil, with the onion, garlic, red pepper and spices. When the vegetables are almost cooked through, mix in the tomato puree. Once fully cooked and with some colour, take the vegetables off the heat, and allow to cool a little. While it's still warm, stir in the lentils, spring onion, lemon juice, coriander, and season to taste. Eat while warm or at room temperature.

I also tried my first bit of proper vegan baking. This was probably the area of food I was most sceptical about not working well. However, I was very pleasantly surprised by the cinnamon doughnut muffins I tried making from this excellent blog (which also turned out to be my favourite vegan/veggie cooking blog). They were light and delicious, and I'm not sure if would have been able to identify them as vegan if I hadn't known.

I tried adapting a Scott Jurek recipe for a chocolate bean bar too, which was ok if not amazing. To be fair, they are not sold as a pudding (more of an energy bar type thing) and I did a lot of subbing for the flours, etc,which may have made the final product a bit different from its intended state. They were quite chocolatey and very dense, but with a slightly strange texture from the beans; imagine a slightly not right mochi. Definitely edible (I did finish them) but not one I'd be running off to make again (unlike the muffins). Quite nice with a iced almond milk mocha coffee though.

I also found a new vegan snack from Burt's, so that was a bonus.

So the conclusion to all of this is that being temporarily vegan made me much more aware of what I was eating; and I'm still eating a lot more whole grains, legumes, and vegetables, and probably more dairy alternatives (though I'm not sure why). I've found myself eating more accidentally vegan meals, and not just chomping on cheese unthinkingly. I have discovered lots of new products (not all great) and some fab new food blogs (which mainly were fab). So I'm really pleased I gave this a go, and though the intention was not to make it a permanent change, it's somehow reassuring to know that I could if I wanted to.

Going vegan- week 3

So things continue to go well in vegan world. I've stuck with the Bircher muesli breakfast (toast with margarine just doesn't appeal that much), but have switched up the fruit I have with it. I've been a bit pressed for time, so I thought I'd look into a few ready made options for my work lunches. I was delighted to find that Waitrose do a whole range of packaged, salad-y things which are vegan. I think they are actually all labelled as vegetarian, but they don't have any dairy in them.

I added some extra cashew nuts to the Asian slaw, which was properly zesty and sharp, with loads of lime in the dressing, and ideal for the stupidly hot weather we've had recently. Lemon and coriander humus (or indeed houmous) is pretty much a classic now, and went perfectly with the roasted cauliflower salad. These are definitely two salads I will buy again (or try and replicate at home). Anyway, with the addition of some salad leaves, tomatoes, olives, and Ryvita, these three items dealt with my weekday lunch requirements.

For dinners in the week, I accidentally made way too much Indian food. To be honest, I don't think I've ever managed to make a small amount of 'desi khanna', so this was not that surprising. I made Bengali-style greens (but with no ghee) and a Bengali-style malai curry but with mushrooms, broccoli, and baby corn instead of prawns. I also increased the spicing a bit to compensate for lack of seafood, so added in 2 tsp of ground coriander, another of ground cumin, and 1 tsp of crushed chilli flakes (mostly due to running out of fresh chillis). This was served with quinoa cooked with Indian whole spices and cashew nuts, in the style of a pilau rice, and some poppadoms. As expected this was all delicious, and the quinoa worked really well with everything else as a rice-alike neutral grain.

Weekend eating involved the appearance of a now somewhat ubiquitous Linda McCartney product (sausage rolls this time, which are actually quite nice). I also made some quinoa and mushroom stuffed, roasted peppers, which were unexpectedly tasty too (despite not having any melted cheese on top), with the sweet pepper contrasting nicely with the savoury filling.

Roasted and stuffed peppers (I'd suggest half a pepper per person as a side dish)

2 peppers (ideally red or yellow)
1 small red onion, finely sliced
2  medium cloves garlic, crushed
Around 50-75g quinoa
5 or 6 chestnut mushrooms, finely sliced
1 tblsp vegan herb cream cheese (optional)
5-6 basil leaves, torn
1 tsp Marigold vegetable bouillon powder
2-3 tblsp olive oil
Around 100ml water, or enough to cook the quinoa

Firstly the peppers- slice each one in half through it's stalk. Bring a pan of water to the boil, and then drop in the peppers. Reduce the heat a bit, and simmer for around 5-10 minutes, until the peppers are tender. Drain, pat dry, and then drizzle over a bit of olive oil. Make sure the sure the peppers are well coated in oil and then put them under a grill until they just start to char and blister a bit. Turn them at least once during the process. If you have functioning oven, you can just oil up the peppers and roast them in there on gas mark 6, but this will take around 30 minutes. While the peppers are cooking, gently fry the onion, garlic, and mushroom, in the rest of the oil. Once they've softened, add the quinoa, the bouillon powder, and hot water to cover. Simmer over a low heat for around 15 minutes, or until the quinoa is cooked, adding more water if needed. Stir in the basil leaves, and cream cheese, and spoon into the peppers. If you wanted some sort of topping I would suggest breadcrumbs, either fried in a pan first and sprinkled on top, or 'raw' drizzled with oil and then grilled.

I've also increased my snacking range, as lots of of savoury, crunchy stuff appears to be effortlessly vegan. I've never had plantain chips before, but they were excellent. And of course, it's hard to go wrong with rice crackers.

For some slightly more extravagant weekend dinners, I cooked an uber-spicy, vegan version of Ottolenghi's black pepper tofu (which has become a modern classic). Making this vegan, just means leaving out the butter, so pretty simple. I  also made quite a lot of cauliflower fried rice and a side of steamed pak choi with sesame oil. As a side note, I didn't bother blanching the cauliflower first this time (and won't bother again). I just sautéed it in a bit of oil and garlic in a non-stick pan, for a few minutes, tipped it out, cooked the other veg, and tipped it back in. This was all fantastic, and again one of those meals which I'd happily eat again, vegan or not.

So veganism so far is proving to be surprisingly delicious.

Going vegan- week 1

Nothing very interesting has been happening here in terms of eating. I've generally been cooking the same range of things and not eating out that much, which is pretty normal really. Anyway, for various reasons I thought that this month I'd try a 30 day vegan challenge. Veganism has always seemed a bit daunting, but after a bit of research it actually seemed pretty achievable. As I don't eat meat anyway, I didn't think it would be that much of a shock to the system and there seem to be a lot of vegan substitutes available too. However, most of these seem to be based on soy and as I didn't want to become one giant walking soy bean I tried not to go too crazy with these. As an additional factor, I've also been minimising the amount of sugar and processed grains I eat, so no relying on pasta or toast for dinner either.

So as I near the end of week 1, here's what I've been eating, some recipes, and some of my views on the vegan products I've purchased.

One thing I've realised about being vegan is that a bit of preparation is often key. So for workday breakfasts I decided on a sort of seed-enriched Bircher muesli with almond milk.

Bircher-style muesli (enough for around 4 portions):

4-5 tblsp coarse porridge oats
Around 50g Asda seed mix (containing pumpkin, sunflower, hemp seeds, and linseeds)
Around 50g Asda triple berry and seed mix (similar to the above but with dried cranberries, goji berries, and blueberries too)
2-3 tblsp chia seeds
Around 100ml, or enough to submerge everything, of Alpro almond milk

I put all of the above in a bowl and left it covered in the fridge overnight. The next morning I took out around a quarter, topped it up with some more almond milk and added some toasted coconut flakes and chopped up fresh strawberries. I have to say that this was very nice indeed. The almond milk was genuinely tasty, all the nuts and seeds meant that the muesli was flavourful as well as filling, and the bit of fresh fruit added some natural sweetness. I would definitely have this again.

I think I got a bit carried away with my work lunches (the fear of being hungry was strong). So I took in a carrot and brazil nut dip, peanut butter hummus, little gem and tomato salad, red pepper and celery sticks, and a couple of Carr's water biscuits with Vitalite sunflower spread. This was actually a bit much, but did facilitate grazing.

The carrot dip was inspired by this Vegan Society recipe, but here's my version.

Carrot and brazil nut dip (easily enough for 4):

4 medium carrots
Around 50g brazil nuts
1 spring onion
0.5 tsp ground cumin
1 tblsp olive oil
Salt and pepper to taste

Peel and chop the carrots, and either boil or steam until they are just cooked. Put in a food processor (yay for the Kenwood mini-chopper), roughly chop the spring onion and nuts, add the oil and cumin to the carrots and process until coarsely blended. I wouldn't normally use un-toasted spices, but in this case the hot carrots apply a bit of heat to the cumin and also soften the spring onion. Season the dip to taste, and leave to cool.

The hummus is adapted from a Nigella Lawson recipe which replaces tahini with peanut butter. I blended around 1.5tblsp of crunchy peanut butter with one clove of garlic, a 400g tin of drained chickpeas, 2-3tblsp olive oil, and a similar amount of water to form a nice hummus-y texture. Add salt and pepper to taste. Again, this makes loads.

For dinner in week 1, I thought I'd go for a big one pot meal-type thing which would minimise cooking after work later in the week. Having decided on a chilli, this plan was a bit overly successful as I ended up with enough to feed at least 8 people. I threw in lots of spices and garlic with a tomato base, and used soy mince for texture and protein. I ate this with a guacamole, a sweetcorn salsa, and some tortilla chips. Here's my basic recipe, which can be easily tweaked depending on what you like or have available.

Mexican-style chilli (easily enough for 8):

454g bag of soy mince (I used the frozen one from Tesco, and left it to defrost in the fridge before cooking)
1 stick celery, diced
1 large carrot, diced
1 green pepper, chopped into chunks
1 yellow pepper, chopped into chunks
Half a red pepper, chopped into chunks
5-6 medium chestnut mushrooms, quartered
1 medium onion, finely sliced
5 medium garlic cloves, crushed
1 bay leaf
210g tin of kidney beans, drained
400g tin of chopped tomatoes in tomato juice
1 heaped tblsp sun-dried tomato purée (I use the Gia brand)
1 tsp dried mixed herbs
2 tsp chilli flakes
2 tsp paprika
2 tsp ground cumin
2 tsp ground coriander
3-4 tblsp olive oil
Salt and pepper to season

Sweat down the celery, carrot, and onion, with the bay leaf in the olive oil over a lowish heat. Once soft add the peppers, mushrooms, garlic, herbs, and spices. After a few minutes, stir in the soy mince, and after a bit more cooking add the tinned tomatoes and purée. I also half-filled the (now empty) tin of tomatoes with water and put that in too, but you might want to vary this depending on the chilli consistency your prefer. After adding salt and pepper, the chilli simmered for around 20 minutes. Add the kidney beans, check the seasoning, and simmer for another 5 minutes or so, or until the peppers are fully cooked.

Due to making so much of all the above stuffs, the weekend was mainly filled with eating the leftovers (I still had to freeze some of the chilli). But an excellent additional breakfast option was a raw chocolate CoYo coconut yogurt. These were genuinely delicious, and tasted more like a chocolate mousse really. As with the Bircher muesli, I'm sure these will be reappearing in post-vegan life.

Weekend dinners were a bit more mixed. One involving a tomato, fennel, and black olive stew, green beans with almonds and garlic, Linda McCartney sausages, and a salad of raw mushroom and jarred artichoke hearts was excellent.

Another involving cumin roasted cauliflower, courgettes with garlic and chilli, guacamole, and smoked tofu with caramelised onion was less good. All the bits tasted quite nice, but it was a pretty random combination which didn't really complement each other. Perfectly edible, but I have realised that beige and green is never the best look for an appetising dinner.

Overall week 1 of veganism went rather smoothly. I ate more beans and soy than I would normally, but probably also more vegetables. I definitely wasn't hungry, and certainly didn't feel I was missing out on anything. So pretty positive really. I can't say I feel particularly 'healthier' either, but that wasn't a particular aim and seven days of doing anything probably isn't going to have much impact. So anyway, onwards to week 2!