Vegan for 5 days.. so far.

I should probably write about my experience so far on Sunday, as it will have been a week but I want to write now!

So far, so good. It has been alot easier than I thought it would be. I am not craving everything I thought I would so bad.

I was feeling pretty crappy all week though, Very tired, weak and constantly hungry. This has made me make sure I get a proper balanced diet. I am so excited all ready about the benefits to my health and of course, my zero contribution Animal farming of any sort. I'm feeling very positive and I think I'll stick with this for sure. It has been hard a couple times though when out with friends. I was in a cafe today. Luckily I wasn't to hungry but I pretty much couldn't eat anything, which sucked. A soya coffee did the job though.

I've been writing down what I've been eating.

Monday: Black coffee, chickpea, potato and cauliflour curry, Bagel with salad, banana.

Tuesday:Baked beans on toast, Blackfrairs Flapjack, Soya Coffee, chickpea, aubergine, pepper casserole with rice, raisins.

Wednesday:Orange, Banana and Strawberry Smoothie(Homemade), popcorn, chickpea casserole(as above), soya coffee, Hummus pitta with carrot and cucumber sticks, nakd bar, 2 oranges, raisins.

Thrusday: 2 nakd bars (:/), Beans on toast, pasta with spinach and sun dried tomato paste, kind vegi bagel from itsa bagel, Nakd bar, Banana, Goodlife falafel burger in a pitta with hummus and salad.

Friday: Innocent smoothie, toast with Peanut Butter and Jam, Pitta with hummus, soya coffe, Nakd bar, Noodles, More smoothie, stir fry and homemade cookies.

As you can see, I have eaten a lot of Nakd bars. I'm hooked on them and they appear to be pretty guilt free. They're good as a snack. I've stocked up on them from Tesco.http://www.naturalbalancefoods.co.uk/

I gave Vegan baking another go and made Cookies and my god they are good! They are the type of cookie I've always wanted to make. Chewy and soft on the inside and crispy on the outside. I got the recipe from http://vegweb.com/index.php?topic=6391.0

and I highly recommend it!

Being able to google items on the spot with my phone to double check items being vegan has been a huge help too!

http://www.goodlife.co.uk/ Goodlife Vegetarian Foods So yum

And a big Thanks to Glauce for the Help and support so far! Check her vegan blog out! http://foodinmylife.blogspot.com/

Vegan Challenge

Going Vegan is something I've talked about on this blog before and something I really would like to do. I have stupid excuses not to do it but really I'm just a foodaholic at the end of the day and giving up certain things would be so hard. Not to forget my Mum when she cooks dinner. She allready finds it pretty hard whenever she makes dinner with me and my sister being vegetarian. So I would be doing a lot more cooking! Which isn't bad.

So, I watched Gary yourofsky's lecture on veganism ( http://www.adaptt.org/ ). He made me think and really pushed me to try veganism. I have a big conscience being a vegetarian and I feel guilty. I know about the dairy industry and the egg industry and how cruel it is. So I feel pretty bad a lot of the time about it as I know what goes on but I'm to selfish to do anything about it.

So for the past couple days, I've been adopting a vegan diet. It also happens to be World Vegan Week (http://www.worldgoveganweek.org/). I started properly yesterday on Monday. I made changes like having no milk in my coffee( college doesn't have soy milk), I ate a chick pea, potato and caulliflour curry, had a bagel with no cheese, snacked on fruit and opted for a fry's vegan bar for my chocolate fix. However, I slipped up when I got home. My chocolate cravings were high and there was a bag of twirls. I need to get vegan chocolate for the house!

Today for breakfast, I ate bakes beans on toast with no butter, a Blacfairs Flapjack (only vegan thing from the SU shop, as far as I'm aware), a soya coffee and a chickpea casserole thing from a cornucopia recipe. I've been pretty hungry all day and now I feel so sick. I don't know what to blame.

I've just made Cornucopia's oat bars, using a recipe from the book. I used Biona Sunflower Vegetable margarine. They turned out lovely but I was short 50g of margarine so they are falling apart just a little bit. There's one of fruits( raspberries, blackberries) between 2 layers of oats, coconut, flour, brown sugar and margarine.

Any recommendations for butter/margarine to bake with?

And soya milk is gross, is rice or oat any nicer?

Extremely chunky vegan apple and berry crumble

Crumble with a hint of coconut.

I got a great recipe of a friend for a apple and berry crumble pie. She brought me a slice of it and it was great.

You need a shortcrust pastry base for the pie.

For the apple and berry filling: 350g cooking apple (shreded)

150g raspberries

125g blueberries

100g sugar

I stewed all this together with a drop of water until it reduced.

For the crumble:  
       100g (vegan) butter

100g caster sugar

25g desecated coconut

250g plain flour

This crumble is nice and chunk so make little molds with the crumble and place it on top of the berry mix. The coconut really adds to it to, I highly recommend it!