Skip to main content

Newbie Vegan

First few weeks vegan went well! Feeling good, lost weight/bloat not sure but I look slimmer around the middle, eating well, not hungry, actually liking the lack of fat and grease from cheese. All in all it's been an easy-ish transition this time and I think it's going to stick.

Here's my finds, lessons and gratuitous food pictures.
I can still have  macaroni and broccoli 'cheese'
I went to a vegan fair on the 31st of October, so I went vegan fully 2 weeks before. I figured I'd be able to find any gaps in what I wanted and fill them at the fair. I was a little disappointed in the food choices there, a lot of bakery stuff so I had some nice cakes but I was looking for some food staples and a lot of it was cosmetics, accessories, and animal charities. Don't get me wrong all really good just not what I was hoping for as a new vegan.
Rice, tofu, spinach and nutritional yeast
However I did speak to some people from Pulsin' and got some vegan protein powders on offer, and some vitamins on offer from the vegan society so I'm set on those fronts for a few months.
Nachos with Tofutti sour 'cream' from Goodness Direct
I also got a box from goodness direct at the end of the first week as I saw them on a facebook group, I must say some of it is available in supermarkets I just didn't check first, but some of it isn't. This was by far the best buy and will definitely be making a repeat appearance.
The best vegan mayo I've had, it seriously tastes the same if not better than regular garlic mayo!

Nutritional yeast is also worth a mention, I add it to things for a cheesy taste and it contains B vitamins.

I also got loads of cheeses and will keep you posted if you're interested on which is best. Tesco smoked and cream cheese spread are also definitely worth a mention, they are very good. I was pleasantly surprised at the smoked cheese, and it melts! I was a happy newbie vegan when I discovered this. Considering they are also the cheapest I've found and Tesco own brand I am actually already declaring this as my favourite before even trying the others, they'll have to be good to beat it.

The Sheeze edam was really not very nice, it tasted like chemicals, so not 100% confident in the others.
Ritz crackers are also vegan, so I can still have crackers and 'cheese' when I settle on my favourite cheese!

This cheese is good for pizza and has a mild flavour like mozzarella, but doesn't really actually melt that well. Also quite expensive, so I may stick to the Tesco stuff as it actually melts.

My first vegan pizza - Sainsburys own brand pizza bases, lots of veg, some Tesco cheese and some Veganic, garlic mayo for crust dipping.
I also found Biscoffi spread, great if you have a sweet tooth and might miss chocolate spread. My word it is good. Do not buy if you are trying to be healthy!

A filling snack to take to work I found was some Alpro vanilla yoghurt with chia seeds in it and some frozen fruit, there were some chia pods on sale in Tesco for 16p each.
Tesco have the best selection of UK supermarkets it seems, our local one has a whole section of vegan cheeses, milks, yogurts. Brand names like Alpro and Violife but also an own brand range which is cheaper, always good to know. The freezer vegetarian section is also large, with vegan options included. The mexican bean burgers, with the smoked cheese on top and some avocado were my first night of being vegan dinner.
Lazy Dinner
We usually shop at Sainsburys and get cash back there so I may just pop into Tesco once every few weeks to top up my freezer stock and check out their range. I hear there are churros and an indian selection in their Christmas range that are both good, I'll test them out and let you know. I may have to test a few churros boxes, you know just to be sure it's good quality.
Vegetable bake with peanut butter tofu
Other than that my main meals have been mostly the same, just with some substitutions for vegan ingredients or taking the cheese out. Looking forward to some more discoveries :)

Check out my instagram and twitter for food pics and vegan finds as I go!

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Tips on Vegan Eating while Travelling

In this post I talked about our recent trip around Europe and there are some restaurant tips for the cities we visited. I also have some general tips on how to have a nice holiday, and not live off of chips: Plan ahead. I researched each city we were visiting and saved web pages as PDF's in my phone (in case we didn't have wifi access) with details of vegan friendly places. Sites like Happy Cow and TripAdvisor list vegetarian and vegan restaurants. Or just a google search will find you plenty of sites.  You can also download areas of google maps to use offline to take with you, and can search for addresses in it as usual so this can come in handy with finding restaurants from the PDF's. If you can't plan ahead that much, i.e. if you don't know where you will be staying, don't wait until you are hungry to try to find somewhere to eat. We tend to keep an eye out while walking around sightseeing in the day for places to go for dinner, look at menus outside ...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Minimalist Challenge - Week 2

I recently started the "Mins Game" or Minimalist Challenge, the idea is that you get rid of one thing on day one, two things on day two and so on increasing by 1 item every day until a month has passed...by the end you will get rid of over 400 items! You can read how week 1 went here , week 2 was actually pretty much a breeze! I started to actually delve into drawers and shelves and the clutter to get rid of was plentiful. I have been posting pictures on instagram , if you feel the need to see pictures, but this week I got rid of: What seemed like about 50 glasses cases (I get a new one each time I get new glasses and never use them!) Cleaning products I have bought, used once, did not get on with and for some reason have kept. Pet things that we/they don't use/eat/play with CD's and DVD's galore! I actually had enough CD's and DVD's to take me into week 3, I post dated the days (on day 11 I counted and I had enough to go up to day 18!) and st...
Post a Comment
Read more

Simple swaps to reduce waste

I have covered the renovation side of this blog mostly up to now, but lets get into the "green" part of ItsAGreenHouse for a little while! Back at the start of 2017 my new years resolution was to cut out 80% of the single use plastic in our household. I didn't expect we could cut it all out, but had seen so many things going around social media about plastic in the oceans and how that plastic bottle of water will still be around in hundreds of years time so I felt I had to do something and 80% over a year seemed doable. I found it actually really easy to cut out the 80%, and am now at the point where (if we were not renovating a house as its unfortunately a messy process) we could only put our landfill bin out once a month with household waste or maybe even longer as we generally put one small bag in there once a week or so. We put out 2 or 3 recycling boxes every fortnight and the food bin as and when. Now we have the allotment we compost most food waste. If you are t...
Post a Comment
Read more