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Some of you have written to me asking what is it exactly I eat now that I am vegan…..well actually, quite a lot, as it happens.
I am a vegan newbie, so I am still learning & researching on ideal vegan foods and recipes.
It has been quite challenging try to make vegan versions of my regular food and many times, it is near impossible.
Whilst I enjoy being vegan, I refuse to eat processed vegan type alternatives such as Quorn, ‘vegan’ bacon (Which is basically a processed combo of so many things I cannot even pronounce), vegan egg altternatives and so on. If a vegan ‘alternative’ isn’t a natural or natural derived food/plant, I do not want it. Sorry, I am not filling my body with chemicals.
I love the fact that I am eating fresh produce and I am enjoying the energy boost I am getting, but I realise that being a gluten intolerant, non-Quorn-or-other-processed-vegan-alternative eating um…..vegan, my food choices are quite restricted. Still, it could be worse! I could be allergic to nuts, tomatoes etc etc.
Sharing my daily (all almost daily) food dairy with you will help keep me on track as well as give you ideas of the many things that a vegan can eat. Some of you want to try vegan foods & asked me to share my meals, so without much ado. here’s my dairy for yesterday.
On Waking:
Instead of starting my day with coffee or hot chocolate, I started drinking this – diluted apple cider vinegar with a slice of lemon & a teaspoon of honey. It’s delish, tastes almost like mulled wine or warm cider, and is great at detoxifying my body’s system of product build-up…..sorry, I meant toxins. More on the benefits of Apple Cider Vinegar HERE
My Breakfast:
I was so happy to find this gluten-free muesli in Tesco. For my American friends, muesli is a mixture of cereal (oats, bran, wheat flakes etc) and mixed seeds, nuts or dried fruit. I can’t have oats as oats contain gluten, which in addition to make me nauseous all day, leaves me bloated as a puffer fish. Many muesli products tend to contain oats, so I was elated to find this gluten-free version.
My breakfast consisted of a bowl of the muesli with a banana & a glass of unsweetened soy milk. I do not like sweetened milk as they always tend to taste to sweet. I prefer to add sugar myself, so this unsweetened version was perfect for me and I didn’t even need to add sugar as the fruit in the muesli added enough sweetness.
I then decided to pre-prepare dinner. I normally do not pre-prepare dinner, but as I was making a marinade, the longer the marinade coats the meat, the better.
Dinner was kebabs or chicken with mixed veg on wooden skewers. For my husband who is non-vegan, I made his marinade which consisted of yoghurt, chilli, lemon, cumin seeds, olive oil, crushed garlic & salt. I mixed these all up with pieces of chicken & kept in the fridge to marinade all day.
My vegan version was a marinade consisting of olive oil, crushed garlic, lemon, mustard powder, chilli & salt, tossed in pieces of cubed tofu, also left in the fridge to marinade all day. We’ll come back to them later.
My Lunch:
I do not have the time to make elaborate lunches, so I stir fried for less than 5 minutes beansprouts, thin rice noodles, mushrooms & spring onions in a little sunflower oil & soy sauce. It took me less than 10 minutes in all – 5 minutes to chop up the veg and 5 mins to cook. Tasted gooood!!!!
Dinner:
I took out my hubby’s chicken and skewered along with pieces of red onion, red pepper, green pepper & mushrooms on wooden skewers & drizzled the remaining yoghurty marinade over the skewers.
I cooked them for about 5-10 minutes on a hot grill pan and finished off in the oven for another 10 minutes, to cook the chicken.
Whilst his chicken kebabs were being cooked in the oven, I skewered my marinaded tofu pieces with the same veg and cooked on the grill pan for 5-10 mins. Meanwhile, I cooked some rice.
In under 30 minutes, dinner was ready & we each had our kebabs on a bed of savoury rice.
The picture below is my husband’s chicken kebab version
I added some lettuce to my plate.
The picture below is my vegan tofu kebab version.
It was very very VERY nice!!!!
That was my vegan food dairy.
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