Monday 27 January 2020

Whilst I couldn't be vegan - update

I have been experimenting recently with a few vegan meals. We also eat primarily vegetarian, or plant based meals about 70% of the time.

So then, what vegan things have I tried? Breakfast for a start. Five days a week, I have a fruit smoothie, using two pieces of fruit, various seeds and normally cow's milk. This has now been changed to almond milk. Hardly any difference in taste so that's a bonus.

Last week we tried soya bolagnaise/chilli using soya mince. I left it to soak for too long after misreading the instructions but here it is after soaking:
After that stage, I cooked it as per a normal meat version but using everything vegetarian. We wanted spag bol but it really didn't have much flavour so added red kidney beans, chilli, cocoa and extra tomato puree:
This made it edible and quite nice but we are not sure we would repeat it. We often have a vetagrian version anyway and would probably stick to that.

So far, that is as far as my trials have gone. Watch this space!

Here is a link to carbon footprints of our food - here.

12 comments:

  1. Whilst I could do vegetarian, I could never do Vegan.
    Now it turns out that the demand for almonds is not only having a devastating effect on water tables all around the world (almonds need a tremendous amount of water) and now it turns out that the pesticides used are what are killing off so many bee colonies!
    As for soy, thank goodness I have a soy sensitivity - I can tolerate the small amounts now added to many foods but cannot do a meal of tempeh or tofu (to put it delicately, I'd spend the next 3 days on the loo) so not an option.
    I hope that you have good luck with it and enjoy trying new options but it's interesting to note that there are consequences to whatever we eat and that it's not all "good or bad".

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    1. Me neither! True about almond milk but I read recently that the water required for almond production is1/3rd of that for a milking cow. Doesn’t help that California is a big producer but they are in drought. This is my first foray into milk alternatives. I have tried coconut and oat as well. Love dairy milk the best though. It seems we are damned if we do and damned if we don’t!

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  2. There's an additional issue re bee losses in California, thought to be from the effects of pesticides and herbicides used in the vast acreages of almond trees. I make my own organic hemp milk. Hemp grows in the UK, so less of an issue re food miles.

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    1. The bee issue seems to be world wide. We garden organically and have bee hotels all around it.

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  3. PS some facts re food production
    https://ourworldindata.org/food-choice-vs-eating-local

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    1. Thanks. I’ve added a link re carbon footprint.

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  4. I might be able to do vegetarian, but I have a carnivore for a Hubby. I have snuck a few vegetarian type meals in every month though.

    God bless.

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    1. We eat vegetarian chilli, spaghetti bolognaise and curry, plus nearly all our soup is vegetarian Nearly all snacks are also vegetarian.

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  5. Sainsbury's used to do a really good own brand frozen mince that was vegan, very easy to use, and a good meat substitute. It was one of the things I used whilst we were completely plant based, and we prefer it to Quorn mince. We use almond milk on cold cereal, but I don't like it in my porridge so use soya, which we also use in smoothies. We haven't tried any others, though KL did mention last week that she'd like to try oat milk.

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    1. Oat milk is easy to make at home but don’t know how it compares to bought oat milk. That’s another one I want to try.

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  6. I never use a soya mince in spag bol or shepherds pie I just stick to a mix of beans and tomatoes. This is the basic recipe I use, but with a tin of mixed beans instead of mushrooms, as I don't eat them.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TnMzbvdyiwM

    Homemade oat milk is delicious, you just have to remember to give it a good shake each time you use it from the bottle, and of course with home made you have the mushy oats to add to other recipes … like spag bol :-)

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  7. We ate vegan when DH's son came to stay, I 'll be very honest and say, it's not for me.

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