VeganMe

I realise my initial plan for this blog has not come to pass as I have planned but having read through my goals, they have not changed, just merely shuffled around a bit..... enjoy my current step: It's vegan time!

Following a year or more of thought about the unhealthy food so readily available to us, and quite often pushed in our faces with false claims that it's good for our health, I have finally taken the bold move to become vegan! I am three days in and it is HARD WORK!

The main problem is not finding the nutritional value in the food or coming up with idea's of how to make a delicious and healthy meal, but it is finding ready made marinades and stock which is vegan suitable (even vegetarian for that matter). Vegetable OXO cubes contain beef!!!! What is that about? Acidity regulator is commonly found to contain lactic acid.

I live in a small village and they have a Holland and Barrett, which is good for some things but generally I don't like it because it's a big company. I wish you could go down the village and see 50 good local experts in their field producing quality goods and none of this budget knock off style 'food to fill' rubbish. One of the reasons this is so hard at the moment is because I am changing old patterns and having to learn where to source alternatives.  The fact that we are literally flooded with popular food that holds big profit margins for the retailer, is a huge chunk of my battle. Anyway I am fixing these problems so here's what I've done so far.

Day One.

I went to Brighton and shopped at my new favourite supermarket "Infinity Foods", to stock up on some basics, I ordered some 'cupboard fillers' from a vegan website (still waiting for delivery).  I prepared some pretty basic meals that day (including a sweet potato with soya butter and vegan mayonnaise, asparagus, and nuts) most of which I will admit were not nutritionally balanced (as I am still learning this too), but they were nonetheless vegan!

Day Two.

A great day, I woke up and had banana and peanut butter (made from only peanuts - no palm oil or other additives) on toast.  Lunch was rice cooked with herbs, salt, olive oil and served with olives, mushrooms, tomatoes, avocado and for dinner I had the same but added some green leafy salad, bean spouts, nuts and soya yogurt. It was all drizzled in balsamic vinegar and a little olive oil - Totally yum!

Day Three.
This is today I have been bad, I had a massive lay in and didn't have breakfast until lunch time, so I ate a banana and some puffed rice with 'innocent smoothy' on it and nuts and apricots. Also yum.  For Lunch I'm about to make tofu, with something, I came online to check out vegan marinades and look up if the one we already had in the house was vegan - it's surprisingly not ;) So I'm going for a simply garlic butter (with my soya butter of course).

If you're a vegan or want to become on and are having or have had the same difficulties as me I'd love to hear from you! Happy fighting the unhealthy food industry.