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?

Butternut squash falafel.

I just made these to bring into college. It’s been a while since I’ve cooked due to lack of time. They are so yum and easy to make so here is how.

Half a medium sizes Butter nut squash- peeled and cut into small chunks

Sweet chilli sauce and Honey

400g can chick peas

3 spring onions chopped up

100g bread crumbs

25g plain flour

1 egg yolk

4 cloves of garlic diced

2 teaspoons of cumin/chilli powder/ground corriander

salt and pepper

juice of 1 lemon

handfull of cashews (Optional though)

1. Cut the Butternut squash into chunks and cover with olive oil, a small bit of honey and sweet chilli sauce and salt and pepper and bake under soft.

2. When finished put the butter nut squash into a food processor and blitz and then transfer into a big bowl.

3. Put the drained chick peas, spring onion,Lemon juice, cashews, garlic and spices into the food processor and blitz until it’s a paste. Then transfer to the bowl.

4. Add the flour, breadcrumbs and egg to the bowl and mix together until a wet paste has formed.

5. Get a baking dish and put a little bit of oil on the base. Shape the mixture into little balls and place on the dish.

5. Bake for around 30 mins on a high heat. I turned them around half way through so they were crispy on both sides!