mostly-plants

[mostly-plants]

The best vegie lasagne we’ve ever made!

Ingredients

Tomato sauce:

1 onion

2 large carrots

2 stalks celery

1 bulb fennel

2 Tbsp olive oil

2 Tbsp tomato paste

2 cloves garlic

3 x 400g tins of tomatoes

2 bay leaves

half a bunch of basil

salt and pepper to taste

Roasted vegetables:

1 butternut pumpkin, sliced

2 eggplants, sliced into rounds

2 zucchini, sliced length-ways

2-3 Tbsp olive oil

1 Tbsp miso paste

2 tsp white/red wine vinegar or balsamic

2 tsp fresh oregano leaves

1 small clove garlic, crushed

Vegan ricotta:

450g firm tofu

1/2 cup raw cashews

1/2 cup water

2 Tbsp fresh oregano leaves (or 2 tsp dried)

2 Tbsp nutritional yeast (optional, but gives a more cheesy flavour)

Salt and pepper to taste

Juice from 1 wedge of lemon

Pumpkin béchamel:

2 Tbsp plain flour

2 Tbsp nuttelex buttery 

2 cups soy milk

Approx 1 cup mashed roasted butternut pumpkin

Salt and pepper to taste

Other ingredients:

Instant lasagne sheets (we used San Remo)

Vegan cheddar (we used Bio cheese)

Directions

First things first

Preheat the oven to 220c, and place 1/2 cup of cashews in 1/2 cup of hot water to soak. 

Roast the vegetables

Slice the pumpkin, zucchini and eggplant into 1-2cm thick slices. Mix the eggplant slices with 1/4 tsp of salt, and then brush both sides of the eggplant with olive oil. Coat the pumpkin and zucchini with the remaining olive oil. Spread out the vegies in a single layer and roast for 35 mins (for the eggplant and zucchini) and 45-60 mins for the pumpkin, or until it is fork-tender.

Make the tomato sauce

While the vegies are roasting, blitz the onion, carrot, celery and fennel in a food processor until they are very finely chopped (or chop finely with a knife). In a large saucepan, add your olive oil, finely chopped vegetables, and tomato paste. Cook over low-medium heat (about 10-15 minutes) until the vegies begin to soften. Crush the garlic and add it to the pot, stirring to cook for about 1 minute until fragrant. Then add the tinned tomato, basil and bay leaves, and let the sauce simmer for approximately 20-30 minutes on low-medium heat. When the sauce has thickened, add salt and pepper to taste, and turn off the heat.

Level-up your eggplant

When the eggplant is done, take it off the tray and mix it with the miso paste, vinegar, oregano and garlic until the eggplant is well-coated. Take out the zucchini and pumpkin when they are fork-tender and set all of the vegies aside to cool. Turn the oven down to 180c.

Magically create some vegan ricotta

In a food processor, combine the tofu, cashews and soaking water, oregano, lemon juice, and nutritional yeast (if using). Pulse the mixture until it’s combined and then process until the cashews are broken down and the texture is similar to ricotta. Add extra water or lemon juice if the mixture needs more moisture. Finally, add salt and pepper to taste. If you don’t have a food processor, you can leave out the cashews and crumble the tofu by hand then mix in the other ingredients. Set this mixture aside.

Prepare the béchamel

To make the pumpkin béchamel, mash about 1 cup of the butternut pumpkin that you roasted. Put vegan butter in a small saucepan and heat on low-medium heat until melted. Add the flour, and whisk constantly for 1-2 minutes or until the mixture bubbles and there are no lumps of flour to be seen.  Gradually add the soy milk, about 1/2 a cup at a time, whisking constantly and adding more milk each time the mixture thickens. Once all the milk is added, heat until the sauce is thick enough to coat the back of a wooden spoon and leave a line when you run a finger over the coated spoon. Mix in the mashed roasted pumpkin until the sauce is well-combined and has an even consistency.

Build your lasagne

To assemble lasagne, place 1/3 of the tomato sauce in the bottom of a 20-30cm long rectangular dish. Cover the sauce with one layer of instant lasagne sheets. Top this layer of lasagne with the eggplant. Cover the eggplant with another 1/3 of the tomato sauce, and top the tomato sauce with a layer of lasagne sheets. Cover the lasagne sheets with the remaining roasted pumpkin and zucchini. Top the pumpkin and zucchini layer with the vegan ricotta mixture. Add the final 1/3 of tomato sauce on top of the ricotta mixture, then add a final layer of lasagne. Top the final layer of lasagne with the pumpkin béchamel, and sprinkle some grated vegan cheddar over the top. Bake in a 180c oven for 50-60 minutes, or until a butter knife slices easily through the lasagne sheets. Cool the lasagne or 10-15 minutes, then slice and serve.

Enjoy!

There are no photos because we ate it all already. Oops! :D

#veganfood #lasagne #delicious #vegetarian #recipe

[mostly-plants]

One month of eating vegan

Day 29: We headed out for brunch with a friend at Light Years Cafe which is becoming a fast favourite for us because of their delicious food, great coffee, beautiful space, and flexibility with vegan options. The menu has a few dishes already labelled as vegan, but the staff were very patient in checking with the kitchen when I asked about whether other things could be made vegan too. And Voila! I got the Pixel Avocado, minus the poached egg:

The fancy stuff on the right includes kale and cabbage chips, pickled radishes, roasted edamame, and edamame hummus. YUM! I really enjoyed this, and as avocado on toast goes, it’s definitely the tastiest and most interesting version I’ve ever had. I also tried their mango smoothie with Ribena pearls. The smoothie was very refreshing, but I couldn’t taste the Ribena flavour in the tapioca pearls. Still, credit to Light Years for making it vegan-accessible by leaving out the gelatine.

Day 30: Since I’d got into the habit of batch cooking and was working from home on Monday, I was able to forage from the fridge for meals. I had some leftover soup for lunch, and leftover lentil shepherd’s pie for dinner. Having ready-made food available has made it way easier for me to stick with a vegan diet this month without having to think “what can I eat?” at every meal. These last few days of the month went so quickly!

Day 31: The final day of my month-long challenge! I’d ordered a fruit and veggie box and a few pantry staples from CERES Fair Food for delivery today. This service has been great for the times when we’re both working a lot and have too many social things on the weekend to be able to fit in a trip to the local markets. I also like CERES Fair Food because it’s organic, supports local farmers, and provides employment for recently arrived refugees. The quality of produce is really good and the variety of receiving whatever’s in season means that you get to eat a range of different veggies, and be creative in your cooking.

My boyfriend had been craving fresh veggies, so on Tuesday night we made this noodle salad adapted from the first My Darling Lemon Thyme cookbook by Emma Galloway, a trained chef who creates vegetarian gluten-free recipes. Instead of rice noodles, we used zucchini noodles (just raw zuchhini put through a spiralizer - you can also use a peeler to create long strips, it just takes a little bit longer). I added some cubed cooked firm tofu and sriracha sauce, and it made a very satisfying dinner:

As I reached the end of my month of eating vegan I was trying to decide what to do once the month ended - whether I felt able to continue eating mostly vegan, or whether I felt like I needed to add anything back into my diet to maintain adequate nutrition, or to have some flexibility in terms of adapting to the different circumstances of daily life/social events etc. The main issues for me in weighing up the decision of what to do after this month ended were:

1. Is this a nutritionally balanced and healthy way to eat in the long-term? 2. Will eating mostly plants reduce my impact on the environment and animals?, and 3. Can I eat a plant-based diet and still do things that are important to me, like sharing food with loved ones?

1. Health After doing a bunch of research and reviewing dietary advice from credible sources such as dieticians, Australian government healthy eating guidelines, and in-depth recommendations from University nutrition departments based on the current nutrition research, I do think that it’s possible to eat a nutritionally balanced vegan diet by planning meals with care, and supplementing key vitamins like B12 that aren’t available in plant foods. Other nutrients that are important to pay attention to include Vitamin D (which can be deficient on any diet when people don’t get enough from sunlight), as well as iron, calcium, iodine and Omega 3 fatty acids.

I would definitely encourage anyone considering a plant-based diet to first do your research, and talk to your doctor and a university-qualified dietician to ensure that you aren’t missing any key nutrients. If you simply cut animal products out of your diet without understanding what foods to add in to replace the nutrients you need, you will be putting yourself at risk of nutrient deficiencies. That said, as I mentioned before, I was iron-deficient for years on an omnivorous diet - so planning your diet for optimum nutrition is important for anyone! Eating vegan has actually encouraged me to pay more attention to getting the nutrients I need, and this means I am ultimately eating a more healthy and varied diet than I was before.

2. The environment, and impact on animals

I had less questions about this aspect of eating a plant-based diet, because overall the evidence seems pretty clear and consistent that reducing consumption of animal products is better for the environment and for animals. Of course, within the range of plant foods produced, there are also differences in resource requirements and environmental impact depending on what exactly you eat. A 2015 study claimed that eating more plants could actually cause greater environmental impact if you analyse emissions per 1000 calories rather than per kilogram. The authors argued that since some plants (such as Broccoli) require more resources to produce 1000 calories of energy, some types of animal products may ultimately cause less impact when compared this way.  However, no-one is eating 3 kilos of broccoli at a time instead of 330 grams of pork. We eat broccoli for its nutrient density, not because it’s a great way to stock up on calories, so this is ultimately a pretty nonsensical comparison to make. Even if you do look at the comparisons for emissions per 1000 calories, the best plant protein sources such as lentils, nuts and dry beans produce anywhere between 10-20% of the amount of emissions caused by animal products. Again, reputable sources of information seem to stack up in favour of the “eat less animal products” argument, regardless of factors such as whether animals are pasture-raised.

3. Sharing food with loved ones

I am very lucky that my partner, family and friends are very supportive and open-minded. I know that the people in my life will make their best effort to offer vegan options where they can, but I’m sure there will also be times where this might be a bit more challenging. I’m sure there will also be times when I want to share different foods with loved ones, for example, a piece of birthday cake, or a dish that is part of a yearly family celebration. Everybody is different, but for me it makes sense to be pragmatic in considering my impacts on a micro/daily level, and doing the best I can in a realistic way.

Overall, I feel I can definitely continue making choices that minimise the demand for animal products. Where animal products already exist in my daily life (e.g. shoes, foods or vitamins I’ve already bought, or occasions where it’s not possible to have specifically vegan food options) then personally I feel more at peace with accepting and appreciating what is already there, rather than throwing things away or letting them go to waste.  For example, while doing my month of eating vegan I accidentally bought muesli bars that contained honey, so I will use these up and buy different products in the future.

The vegan challenge wrap-up

Q. What do you do to celebrate the end of a successful month of vegan eating on World Vegan Day? A. You buy yourself vegan roast duck rice paper rolls for lunch from Mr and Mrs Banh Mi. Nom! I will definitely be back to try their vegan BBQ pork Banh Mi.

This month has been really interesting, and I’m really glad I did it. Here are my highlights of eating vegan:

I had lots of fun trying lots of different foods and recipes and finding new favourites (miso glazed eggplant, chickpea shakshuka, apple pie pancakes, peanut butter & maple granola, the list goes on...)

Plants tend to have less calories but heaps of nutrition, so you can eat very well and get plenty of vitamins and minerals without excess energy.

I’m much better informed about my nutritional requirements and am consciously making more effort to eat a balanced diet.

My digestion is amazing, because fibre.

I feel like my energy has been more stable.

My skin started to clear up towards the end of the month.

My weight stayed exactly the same, but I’m pretty happy with that given the range of delicious food I’ve eaten over the last month (including quite a few baked goods and my new favourite snack - peanut butter granola!)

 When it came to lowlights, there were fewer:

Restaurants/cafes that don’t know how to vegan - e.g. there are little to no vegan options, or asking for things to be made vegan results in confusion and being served dry toast with a beaker of oil. #foodfails.

Accidentally overdoing the batch-cooking, and ending up with more quinoa and chard than any human could reasonably be expected to ingest.

Going from eating almost no legumes to eating heaps of legumes does result in being little bit gassy at first, but your body adjusts pretty quickly. The positive of this experience is that the fibre-rich plant foods are feeding your good gut bacteria, and they are helping support your health in lots of ways. So I’d say it’s all worth a bit of bloating in the end!

All of the above is just my own experience, and yours may be different, but for me this has been an overwhelmingly positive change. I was surprised that I didn’t really miss dairy or meat over the month. Still, I decided that rather than telling myself I had to continue eating 100% vegan from there, I was open to re-including minimal animal products in my diet if I felt like I needed to. This kept the pressure off so that I could be free to let things evolve rather than forcing change too quickly.

Since finishing the vegan eating challenge, I have eaten a small amount of dairy a couple of times (which made my skin break out quite noticeably), along with a mouthful of the scrambled eggs my partner ordered when we went out to breakfast. It’s been interesting, because I had thought I would either be a bit grossed out by these things after avoiding them for a month, or the opposite - that I might think “now I remember why people love eating this stuff!”

In fact, I just felt (in an extremely strayan way) “Yeah.. nah.” Like... I get it, but I just don’t really feel like I want it anymore. It’s kind of nice to feel a sense of calm acceptance about that, because decisions that I’ve made from a place of calm acceptance tend to work better for me in the long run than those that are all-or-nothing, or highly emotionally charged.

So, here’s my plan: KEEP CALM AND CARROT ON! :D

By this I mean I will continue eating mostly plant-based, supplement B12 to be on the safe side, and not freak out if I make mistakes or can’t manage to be 100% vegan 100% of the time. Being more conscious of my choices and eating a diet that is 95% plants is still a huge step forward from the probably (sub)Standard Australian Diet I was eating before, and will still reduce my negative impact on animals and the environment.

I will keep posting my vegan food adventures on Mostly Plants, and use it as a way to keep track of my favourite recipes, and share these with other people who would like to eat their vegetables (and enjoy them too!) On that note, I’ll finish with one of my recent favourite dishes - Vietnamese style noodle soup with tofu, inspired by The Viet Vegan’s recipe for Homemade Vegan Vietnamese Pho.

#veganfood

[mostly-plants]

Week 4 of eating vegan

Day 22: Bakesale day! Over the course of the weekend I made about 85 earl grey & orange cookies, 45 coconut raspberry macaroons, 32 bagels, 24 chocolate cupcakes and 12 lemon blueberry muffins (all vegan). And thanks to my lovely friends, we raised $330 to support Oxfam’s work in addressing the current food crisis in eastern Africa.

Other than catching up with a few friends and feeling happy that we were able to raise some funds, one of my highlights of the day was eating a fresh bagel with nigella seeds, topped with Tofutti Better than cream cheese, fresh tomato and black pepper. It was delightful! I will definitely be making more of these bagels soon! I used a recipe from YouTuber NikkiVegan and just added 100 grams of sourdough starter to each batch for extra flavour and rise. My favourite bagel toppings are sesame seeds or nigella seeds. So good! After a full weekend of baking we were both pretty exhausted, so ordered some Vietnamese food for dinner from Paper Plate. It was pretty tasty, but a little bit expensive for what it was. Also, although the veggie rice paper rolls we ordered had some really enjoyable and interesting flavours, they came with both ends open instead of the traditional enclosed wrap. This made them much harder to eat, because every time you took a bite, the fillings would slip out the bottom. There’s nothing wrong with being creative, but also... sometimes there’s a reason that the original is the best. For dessert I ate 2 more cupcakes because I was tired and hungry and they were full of sugary chocolatey-coffee goodness. I then experienced #cupcakeregret because 2 cupcakes is 1 too many. You win this time, cupcakes. Lesson learned.

Day 23: I was pretty exhausted after baking all weekend, but I had some toast with Tofutti cream cheese and tomato / peanut butter and raspberry jam for breakfast, and then headed off to work. I had leftover Pho for lunch, plus some fruit and coconut raspberry macaroons for snacks, and then (again) leftover black bean tacos for dinner. I also had 1 (and only 1) cupcake for dessert.

Day 24: I was still exhausted this morning, so slept in a little bit and had black bean tacos for brunch (yes, I am just really feeling the love for Mexican food right now!). Morning tea was coffee (of course), a couple more macaroons and a chocolate brownie. Yes, very indulgent, but dinner will be mostly greens.

I was really tired in the afternoon so a had a little rest and then made a “use up what’s in the fridge” stir-fry for dinner. I had a slightly wilted green cabbage, some broccoli and bok choy, and some firm tofu. I mixed up a few tablespoons of peanut butter with about half the amount of sweet soy sauce and a bit of sriracha to make peanut sauce, and cooked up all the veggies and tofu before mixing in the sauce and some pepper. It turned out pretty well! I’d shredded the cabbage into strips and once cooked they were kind of like noodles.

Day 25: Toast for breakfast again - the classic PB and banana on toast with a tablespoon of chia seeds and maple syrup for extra healthy fats, minerals, and, let’s be honest, the maple syrup was there because it’s delicious. :d

Work was hectic so I ended up having lunch (left-over stir-fry) really late, but then by the time I got home around 7pm I felt like doing some cooking to wind down. I’d wanted to try making some seitan, so I attempted this scallion (aka spring onion) sausage recipe from Mary’s test kitchen. I think I underseasoned the mix a little bit, because although they turned out ok, they tasted a little bland. In fairness, I’d used chives instead of spring onions because I didn’t have any at the time, and it may have been a mistake to substitute the key ingredient named in the recipe title! XD I also managed to cut my finger on the edge of some aluminium foil while rolling the sausages up (so talented, how DOES she do it?) Oh well.. You win this time, seitan, but this isn’t over yet!

I’d soaked some barley the night before, so I chopped up some onion, carrot and celery and cooked it along with some veggie stock and bayleaves, then added the barley. For extra veggie goodness (and to clear the last scraps out of the veggie crisper) I threw in some kale and some asparagus. This turned into a really nice hearty soup, and the sliced seitan sausages made a nice chewy addition scattered atop. 

One of the perks of this month has been learning how to cook new things, and in particular, I’m finally starting to understand kale. Yes, it’s super nutritious and a good source of calcium and other vitamins, but because I had no idea how to cook it before I was like “Why does everyone love this tough, bitter thing??” Soooo apparently you need to remove the stalks (at least the thicker base parts), or if you want to eat the stalks you need to cook them for a really long time because otherwise (as I found out) they are really fibrous and hard to eat. I now know how to cook kale so that it’s actually edible. Thanks, internet!

Day 26: There were heaps of leftovers from all my cook-ups this week so I just foraged from the fridge for the day - I feel like I’ve definitely got the hang of making a few meals ahead and having a few key ingredients that make for easy and relatively healthy snacks. I’m finding that even on the days where I don’t think I’ve been as conscious of trying to balance my meals, I still seem to be getting almost 100% of my RDIs for protein, iron, calcium and other vitamins according to the tracking I’ve done with Cronometer. That said, I’m sure it’s not 100% accurate, because it makes assumptions about things you enter - like thinking my soy milk is fortified with B12 when it isn’t.  Cronometer (or any app for that matter) is not going to be flawless, but it’s definitely a helpful guide in making sure I’m not accidentally very deficient in anything.  Now that I’m more familiar with the kinds of foods that are going to provide the range of nutrients I need on a daily basis, I feel comfortable that I can make good choices and achieve a good balance of nutrition myself, but it’s still handy to be able to check how things are stacking up on occasion.

Day 27: I woke up feeling like pancakes for breakfast, and because I was working from home I had the flexibility to cook this morning. I found this recipe for apple pie pancakes from NikkiVegan and decided to give it a go. I didn’t have the chickpea flour she used in the recipe, so I just went with 1 cup whole wheat flour, and 1 cup white wheat flour. I also added a little bit of dark brown sugar and maple syrup to the pancake mix, along with a pinch of salt. I reduced the amount of baking powder to about 1 tablespoon, and used less maple syrup with the apple compote (probably about 1/4 cup instead of the 3/4 cups in the original recipe). Since I had added a little bit of sweetness to the pancakes themselves, I didn’t feel like I needed to use so much syrup in the topping. These turned out AMAZING! They were seriously the fluffiest, tastiest pancakes I’ve ever had! Just look at them!!

SO. FLUFFY. This is 3 small pancakes stacked on top of each other, but it literally looks like a slice of cake. I mean technically it is cake, but I have never seen a pancake this fluffy before! The flax eggs worked very well, and added some bonus ALA/Omega 3 goodness. I’m not oil-free so I did add a dash of canola oil to the pan, and cooked the pancakes on medium-low heat so the middle had time to cook through before the outside got overdone. These were really filling, so 3 pancakes turned out to be one too many for me. The good news is they keep great, I just covered the cooked leftover pancakes and put them in the fridge, then heated them for 1 minute in the microwave the next day and they were just as good. FYI our microwave is weird so if you have a normal microwave 30 seconds might even be enough. Or you can probably reheat them in a pan on low-medium heat for 30 seconds to a minute on each side.

Friday night I did some shopping in the city for a birthday present, and then we went to a friend’s farewell drinks. On the way home the boyfriend spotted a pop-up van at QV, so it was DOUGHNUT TIME! They have vegan doughnuts, so we got a Fairy Godmother and a Pump Up The Jam. Both were very yummy, but hooooooooooooooooly heck! So. much. sugar! Starting AND ending the day with cake is probably not a great strategy for health in the long term, but in the short term it was very enjoyable. Just goes to show you can eat healthily or unhealthily as a vegan, so it just comes down to making the choices that make you feel good in the long run.

 Day 28: It was Saturday so we slept in and had leftover pancakes for breakfast, then went to our friend’s birthday party and had fun exploring Brimbank Park. I like their random giant animals and vegetables, and their Auslan and Braille Alphabet signs:

I wanted to do another batch cook for the week this afternoon, so I made a brown lentil shepherd’s pie with a base of onions, carrots, celery, fennel and vegan beef-style stock. I added tomato paste and dried porcini mushrooms for extra flavour, and it turned out really well! It was also a very good way to use the bag of potatoes that had been sitting in our pantry for the last couple of weeks!

 I also made some vegan pizza, using a quick, no cook pizza sauce recipe I originally saw on America’s Test Kitchen. You can find the quick pizza sauce recipe with notes here - it uses a blender or food processor, but you could also just use diced/crushed tomatoes instead, or cut up the whole peeled tomatoes and mash them together with the other ingredients. To top the pizza I caramelised some red onion, scattered on some chopped olives, and made a batch of fresh moxarella using this recipe from Vedged Out. There’s also a full recipe for vegan margherita pizzas at this link, so you’ll find a dough recipe and another (cooked) sauce recipe there too. The pizza was awesome - the moxarella gives you the stretchy gooey texture that makes melted cheese so enjoyable to eat, and it’s also very quick and easy to make if you have a blender. Just look at this cheezy goodness...

 And that’s it for week 4! Even though there’s only a few days to go of my month-long vegan challenge, I’m honestly not holding out for anything, because I really don’t feel like I’ve been missing out at all. I’ve really enjoyed being able to experiment and cook different foods, and overall I’ve felt really good. Although this weekend was pretty junk-foody, overall I’ve definitely been eating more vegetables and wholegrains than I previously was, and my energy levels and digestion have been pretty great. Those are probably the main changes I’ve noticed so far health-wise, but I’ll do a proper wrap up at the end of the month. Bye for now!

[mostly-plants]

Week 3 of eating vegan

Day 15 started with baking a couple of loaves of my new favourite bread: Caraway Rye Sourdough. It is soooo savoury and delicious, and develops such a beautiful rich chestnut colour when baked. I was taking one to a friend, and one was for the boyfriend and I to eat over the week.

Once the bread was out of the oven I travelled through the city to go to a workshop on plant based nutrition by Bloom Nutritionist, who my friend had recommended. The workshop was very informative and covered a range of key practical info, including recommendations to supplement a whole food vegan diet with B12, Algal Omega 3s, and a multivitamin to cover things like Iodine and Selenium. I got a lot out of the workshop, but I had made the mistake of not having lunch because I’d had a reasonably late breakfast, and wasn’t hungry - until I got to the workshop venue. I managed to score an apple at the event, but I got the brain-fades half-way through the talk, and then by the time I got home I was so hungry I ate a stack of food including Popcorn Tofu with chilli sauce, leftover vegan pizza, and a handful of these very un-nutritious cookies. Oops!

Day 16: I had some bircher muesli with blueberries for breakfast, and ordered some more fruit and veggies / pantry staples from CERES Fair Food. I had a late snack and then made wholemeal pasta with lentils and veggies for dinner, topped (of course) with a generous amount of Cashy-Cashy Parm-Parm. YUM!

Day 17 was a very busy day getting prepared for some upcoming work deadlines and then going to class in the evening, but because the fridge was stocked with leftover pasta that made lunch easy. The boyfriend and I were both finishing our days late, so we ended up meeting up in the evening and getting dinner from a local Mexican food place. Luckily they had good vegan options, but I did feel a bit sad not being able to just share our meals like we usually would. I think this was the first day that I started to feel challenged by eating vegan. For me it’s not the food part, because I love fruit, veggies, nuts and seeds (and yes, I love my legumes now too). I can imagine being fairly happy eating these things as the main components of my diet, but I realised I would really miss the positive feelings that comes with sharing the same food together with loved ones. In starting this challenge I had thought that the social aspect of eating vegan would be the most difficult part for me, and that’s probably the case. 

Day 18: Overall I’ve been feeling really good after eating vegan for two weeks - my energy levels are the same or better than they have been, I feel fine physically and mentally, my digestion is great, and weirdly I don’t seem to be sweating as much? (Not that this was particularly a problem before, it’s just my observation). I have been trying to read and listen to more information about the case for (or against) plant-based eating in order to weigh up the available evidence and decide whether to continue. 

Although I’m leaning towards more plant-based eating (mostly because of the environmental and welfare impacts of animal products), I do think I would struggle with not being able to share things with my partner, or participate in family dinners etc. in the same way. At the moment, I think I might end up settling on more of a flexitarian approach (i.e. mostly plant-based, but flexible on occasion). I guess I’ll see how I go with the rest of this challenge...

Day 19 I woke up a bit tired because I’d had coffee about 5pm the day before and was a bit too wired for sleep until about 3am. My bf had the opposite problem and woke up super early. Luckily, he somehow managed to be functional anyway, and because he is lovely I got coffee delivered right to my bedside <3 I made a quick breakfast of avocado on toast, and chopped up some raw veggies that needed using, to take with baba ganoush dip for lunch. I also packed some homemade granola, a bit of dark chocolate, an apple and a banana (I’m getting better at this “always have plenty of snacks available” thing.  Work was pretty hectic, so I didn’t get to have lunch until about 3:30pm when I realised I was getting pretty hangry. I felt much better after some food, and a little afternoon chocolate pick-me-up. I felt like something a bit different for dinner, so ended up making miso-glazed eggplant with garlic bok choy, and crumb-coated smoked tofu and sweet potato. I know that sounds super fancy, but actually it was mostly so I could use up the wilting bok choy at the back of the fridge (and bump up my calcium intake for the day!). 

The miso glaze for the eggplant is sooooooooo ridiculously good, and actually very quick and easy to make (my favourite combination in cooking!) We got the recipe from a vegetarian / vegan cooking class at Gourmet Kitchen Cooking School - I’d highly recommend their classes as something fun and special to do. Anyway, so, you want some miso glaze? (Spoiler alert: yeah, ya do). Just get a small saucepan and mix in: 2 Tablespoons of Miso Paste (I used white miso) 2 Tablespoons of sugar (or a neutral tasting liquid sweetener like agave syrup) 1 Tablespoon of Mirin 1 Tablespoon of Sake (I didn’t have this, so used Shaoxing Chinese cooking wine instead - it worked totally fine) Pop the saucepan on a low heat, stir/whisk the ingredients together, and in mere moments you will have your golden brown and delicious miso glaze! The eggplant gets sliced in half lengthways and roasted cut side down at 220c for about 30 mins. Then you turn the eggplant cut side up, and coat generously with miso glaze. Like... Seriously. Just pour that goodness all over everything, it is DELICIOUS! Pop the glazed eggplant halves back into the oven/under the grill for a few mins (watching that the glaze doesn’t burn), and then when you just can’t wait any longer, take them out of the oven, sprinkle them with some green spring onion and sesame seed, and try not to burn your mouth as you inhale that deliciousness!  The bok choy I (finally) learned how to cook properly from watching the Viet Vegan, and the crumbed tofu and sweet potato was just to use up the rest of the coating mixture from making Popcorn Tofu earlier this week. It was great! If you want to try this, I’d definitely recommend marinating your tofu beforehand, or dunking it in a really flavourful sauce afterwards, because although the crumb coating is tasty, the tofu itself doesn’t have much flavour. The sweet potato was a definite winner! No oil needed, just toss bite-sized pieces of raw sweet potato in your crumb/seasoning coating, and bake them in the oven at 220c for about 45 minutes. NOM. So, at the end of Day 19 I’m feeling good about kicking some nutrition goals, and eating some hella tasty food. Yay!

Day 20: I felt like something savoury for breakfast and since I had the luxury of working from home on Friday, I decided on a Mexican inspired breakfast, with a spicy mix of cooked black beans, onion, carrots, corn, topped with fresh tomato, chives and coriander, and (of course) guacamole. Tortillas from La Tortilleria because they are by far the best I’ve had. A very satisfying start to the day!

Lunch was nice and easy - leftover bok choy and sweet potato with steamed silken tofu and a quick miso dressing (1/2 tablespoon miso paste, 1/2 tablespoon mirin, 1/2 tablespoon maple syrup and 1/2-1 tablespoon of water to get the desired consistency. Then, because it was so tasty - more Mexican for dinner, along with some red wine and dark chocolate for dessert. :)

Day 21: BREAKING NEWS - Scrambled silken tofu with miso dressing and chives on toast is DELICIOUS. I know the recipes say to use firm tofu for scrambling, but personally I think silken tofu matches the texture of scrambled eggs more closely. The miso dressing works great in this, because it’s got the salty/savoury flavour going on, and the slight sweetness balances the slight bitterness that some tofu can have. Sold!

After breakfast we went to the markets to pick up a few ingredients for the bakesale we were doing on Sunday. We braved the supermarket on a Saturday, bought many kilos of flour and sugar, and then paid a visit to Trang for Banh Mi - they have stacks of vegan options so I’m keen to try more, but so far I can’t get past the vegan BBQ pork because it is so tasty!  I was pretty hungry by the time we ate so forgot to take a photo, but trust me - it is packed with lightly pickled veggies, fried spring onion and delicious magical vegan meat (I’m guessing they’re probably seitan-based, but I don’t know for sure).  Pretty much the rest of Saturday was spent baking a ton of things for Sunday’s bakesale, and “quality testing” the several batches of cookies I made. I also ate wayyyyyy too much cinnamon coffee icing while trying to get the right consistency to top the chocolate cupcakes I made. Whoopsies! So... I guess I’m proving that you can definitely be vegan and eat a bunch of junk food, but then you probably won’t feel so great afterwards. Eat your veggies, kids! 

[mostly-plants]

Week 2 of eating vegan

Day 8 started out fabulously because I met a good friend for breakfast at Smith and Daughters and we had a lovely time catching up over some delightfully fluffy and custardy mulled wine french toast, with quince paste and some kind of magical vegan whipped (coconut?) cream. Yummmmmmm!

Afterwards we wandered down to the Cruelty Free shop because I wanted to have a look and investigate a couple of ingredients I hadn’t been able to find in regular grocery stores. They had the things I was looking for (gluten flour for a homemade seitan experiment, and a particular seasoning called Kala Namak that imparts a flavour similar to eggs, for things like tofu scramble/vegan mayo). 

It was fun browsing all of the different products, and they definitely get credit for stocking my favourite lip balm, HURRAW! but ultimately, exploring different places is a good reminder that eating vegan is like eating any other way - it can be healthy or junky, easy or complicated, cheap or expensive, or any combination of these things depending on how you choose to go about it! I am very lucky in that I can afford and find all the core ingredients I need (like veggies, fruit, rice, oats, legumes, nuts and seeds) from my local market or supermarket at reasonable prices. Although I’m fortunate to be able to find and buy more specialised ingredients for a treat, it’s definitely not essential to have these in order to eat vegan. In reflecting on my first week of eating vegan, I realised that I had eaten a relatively junky diet (mostly because of “taste-testing” new snacks I’d wanted to try, and nomming on baked goods I’d been experimenting with)... oops! So for Week 2 I was keen to try and keep things fairly simple and healthy. Hence - Sunday batch cooking! I made a Pad Thai dish with lots of veggies and some marinated tempeh, and I was very pleasantly surprised by how good it was! Most tempeh I had eaten in my previous life as a vegetarian had pretty much tasted like rubber... mushy, unappetising rubber. Thankfully, this recipe by Minimalist Baker makes it taste soooooo much better. I’m still more of a tofu person, but alright - I’ll give you another chance Tempeh, you tricky beast. 

Day 9: I’ve been learning how to build new food routines based around plant foods, and have now figured out a couple of breakfasts that are quick, tasty, and pack in as much nutrition as possible. Thanks to my batch cook on Sunday I had some apple cinnamon compote in the fridge, which made a delicious addition to some muesli with chia seeds, nut milk and coconut yoghurt for breakfast. It also made a great snack with toasted granola!

With any way of eating, it’s important to ensure we get enough of the nutrients we need, and I’m aware that a few key ones to watch for are Iron, Calcium and B12 intake. As someone who has had Iron deficiency for the most part of the past ten years, I can tell you: a) It is not fun. You feel suuuuuuuper duper tired and weak b) it is also suuuuuuuper possible to be iron deficient on an omnivorous diet. Even when I was eating a diet containing red meat a couple of times a week, my iron levels kept dropping so low that I had to take supplements. Ironically (pun intended), I am more consistently getting enough dietary iron now that I am eating vegan, because I am actually paying attention to my iron intake, and making an effort to eat more iron-rich plant foods like beans, lentils, chickpeas and tofu. Day 10: Speaking of chickpeas - chickpea smash is one of my new favourite things!

A little while ago, I made a vegan mayonnaise from a Viet Vegan recipe that uses aquafaba instead of egg (chickpeas, what can’t you do?). This chickpea salad is just mashed cooked chickpeas, vegan mayo, salt and pepper, lemon juice and a ton of chopped dill. I love the flavour of dill in this, but you could just swap it for another herb if you prefer - no big dill... :D

Day 11 involved some blueberry bircher muesli and coffee for breakfast, veggie bibimbap at a Korean restaurant with work friends, and leftover tofu, pumpkin and spinach curry based on this delicious recipe from Mary’s Test Kitchen for Cheater Butter Chicken. It’s become a favourite at our place - especially with my cheater garlic naan (which I will post a recipe for at some point)! 

I also discovered a new favourite treat snack today - Thinkfood Pumpkin Seed Munch. It is so satisfyingly crunchy and just slightly sweet, but with reasonably healthy ingredients. However, it is dangerously easy to eat a whole pack, so I had a bit of a snackcident!

Day 12 I had some leftover smoothie and some chickpea smash on toast for breakfast, and some interesting chats at work with a(nother) colleague who is mostly vegan. the last of my leftover dhal and rice made a handy lunch, and dinner was more leftover curry with a handful of greens thrown in. Fruit for snacks (and a leftover cookie or three) rounded out this almost entirely left-over-based day of food. Finally I had some apple with coconut yoghurt a bit of granola, and then realised... the granola had honey in it - so it wasn’t completely vegan because honey is an animal product. Oops! Luckily, I had recently watched this video about making mistakes on a vegan diet (summary: they happen to everyone), so I just filed that under learning experiences and moved on.

Day 13: I was less rushed this morning and was in the mood for a slightly more substantial breakfast, so I decided to try making tofu scramble based on this recipe from vegan YouTube channel, Hot For Food. I used silken tofu because I wanted to see if it would work, and it actually turned out really well (although you end up with smaller pieces of tofu because they break down a bit further as you stir things around). I was surprised how tasty it was. Next time I’d use about 1/4 teaspoon of turmeric instead of 1/2 a teaspoon as I found that flavour to be a bit stronger than I’d prefer. Otherwise the recipe was great, except that I probably didn’t need to add the nut milk because silken tofu already contains more moisture than firm tofu. Other than that, I would definitely make it again, and I’ll try experimenting with kala namak next time!

Breakfast was very filling so that kept me going for most of the day, but I did have some papaya and kiwi fruit as a snack in the afternoon, and it was so colourful and pretty I had to take a photo. Fruit is the best! Thanks nature. We’re so lucky to have access to fresh food, so I think it’s worth appreciating it. 

Late afternoon I had some more leftover chickpea smash on rye toast, and then in the evening I made PIZZA! It was Friday night and the boyfriend had been working very hard, so I felt like it was a good time to have something a little bit special for dinner. I made one pizza with a base of barbecue sauce from Mary’s Test Kitchen topped with spinach, caramelised onion and asparagus spears (spoiler alert: it was delicious!) and another pizza with a tomato based sauce and olive tapenade, topped with roast zucchini and red capsicum. Yum! Totally satisfied the pizza craving, no cheese necessary (even for my cheese-loving boo!)

Day 14 was a Saturday, so I got to sleep in (such a luxury!) and then we went for a walk to our local cafe. They generally have very nice food, and I knew they had some vegan sweets, so I had hoped it would be easy to find something on the menu I could eat. Nothing on the menu was labelled as vegan, so I asked if they could just leave the feta off an otherwise vegan dish, but the waitress said the feta was part of the avocado smash. They had avocado in their sides menu, so I asked if I could order that dish and they could just swap out the avocado-feta smash for plain avocado. I thought she’d understood, but when she came back with our food, mine was just 2 pieces of plain toast with half an avocado and some oil on the side. Luckily my boyfriend is super lovely, and shared his roast tomato with me so that my breakfast was a bit more interesting. I recognise that we’re very privileged to even be able to go out to eat occasionally, but that’s partly why I was a bit disappointed with this cafe, because when you’re paying more for a meal out, you want it to be enjoyable and worthwhile. Although I respect how challenging commercial cookery is, I don’t think it necessarily has to be that hard to swap out one ingredient of a dish, or prepare things in a way that provides options for people. However, when we went for a walk around our area, I discovered two other places that have many more vegan options, so next time I look forward to trying one of them! When I got home I was thirsty, so blended up some papaya, frozen raspberries, lemon juice and coconut water. Very refreshing and so colourful! I also made some peanut butter maple granola (using this recipe from Emilie Eats - minus the banana chips and chocolate chips) so that I could enjoy some for a snack without the accidental honey that was in the previous batch. Yum! It turned out very tasty and crunchy, and was very fast to make. Everything you want in homemade granola!

As the cherry on top of week 2, we got to have dinner with a couple of wonderful friends who kindly whipped up an AMAZING vegan feast based on Hana Assifiri’s Moroccan Soup Bar cookbook, including an apple, zucchini and pomegranate salad, a cauliflower and potato bake, and a burghul and eggplant dish topped with almonds and tahini dressing. I love my friends! If you are in Melbourne and haven’t been to the Moroccan Soup Bar (or their sister place, the Moroccan Deli-cacy), I highly recommend a visit. Just look at this deliciousness:

And that was week 2 of vegan eats. So far so very good!

[mostly-plants]

Week 1 of eating vegan

Since around June this year I had been thinking about eating more plants, and had gradually been introducing more vegan meals into my diet with the help of amazing vegan bloggers/YouTubers like Mary’s Test Kitchen and The Viet Vegan. If you want some pro tips on how to make delicious vegan food, I highly recommend checking out their channels as a place to start! I was feeling good eating more veggies and legumes, so I decided I’d try eating vegan for a month and see how I felt at the end of October. Here’s how week 1 went: Day 1 was great! I had breakfast at a friend’s place and she made us apple cinnamon pancakes by swapping out the eggs for applesauce, and using soy milk. Some fresh apple, blueberries and maple syrup sealed the deal - YUM! I was full most of the day and was busy with a few things so didn’t really eat again until dinner. We were pretty tired, so went to Grill’d for dinner on the way home from visiting family, and their veggie vitality burger made a very satisfying dinner (with sweet potato fries on the side because of course!)

Day 2 I was craving savoury things, so I experimented with making a cashew based cheese using this recipe as a guide. The texture was surprisingly good, but I just put too much garlic powder in. Luckily my boyfriend is incredibly lovely and didn’t mind the garlic breath because “at least you’ll be safe from vampires!”) :)

Day 3 I made a marinated tofu rice bowl based on this recipe from Mary’s test kitchen - yes, Mary coming through with the darn tasty vegan food yet again! I also ate a bunch of bok choy because I’m realising that my mum was right, and it’s a really good idea to eat your greens. This is particularly important on a vegan diet, because we need all those key minerals like iron and calcium, which green vegetables like bok choy, spinach, kale and broccoli are high in.

Day 4 I woke up feeling more energised than I had in a while, and since I’d been eating heaps of fibre-rich foods like veggies, fruit and wholegrains, I found my digestion had improved a lot. I was also incredibly excited to find THE BEST STORE-BOUGHT BABA GANOUSH I have ever had, by Dari’s Table. It was super smokey and tasty, and I ate a bunch of it on Mary’s Gone Crackers Super Seed crackers. These crackers are also delicious, but they’re silly expensive, so more of a treat than an everyday food. I also accidentally over-indulged a bit in test batches of baked goods that I’d been prepping for a bakesale at the end of this month, so all in all it was a bit of a treat yo’self day.

Day 5 I realised I hadn’t prepped anything to take to work for lunch, so I hurriedly chopped up a bunch of fresh veggies and packed some leftover crackers and dip to take with me (Dari’s Baba Ganoush and Yumi’s Beetroot Hummus). It ended up being very tasty and satisfying. I did find I was getting a bit more hungry between meals, so just made sure that I had some fruit or other snacks on-hand in case I needed a quick energy boost throughout the day. I made an incredibly yummy creamy mushroom pasta for dinner using a cashew based cream sauce (cashews blended with water and seasoned to taste), and I’m finding that I’m not missing dairy as much as I thought I might. I never drank much dairy milk before, and that’s easily swapped out for plant-based milk; and although I (and boyfriend) were highly suspicious of vegan cheese to begin with, I’ve been pleasantly surprised by how easy it is to make creamy sauces, and a super tasty “parmesan” without using dairy. Boyfriend has nicknamed this delicious concoction: “Cashy-cashy Parm-parm”. Win!

Day 6 I was feeling pretty tired because I didn’t sleep so well the night before, but I had made a red lentil dhal(?) with lots of ginger and warming spices the night before, so I was grateful to be able to eat something cosy for lunch with minimal effort. I’m learning that batch cooking/prep is definitely my friend in this vegan cooking adventure. Partly because it’s just quicker and easier when you have at least one or two meal options in the fridge that are ready to eat, and partly because I find it really hard to cook or make food decisions when I am already hungry. This is where your present self can be a huge help to your future self by planning ahead and creating leftovers!

Day 7 I made a quick fruit smoothie in the morning because I had slept in and was rushing to get ready, but needed something light for breakfast. Then around 2pm I went to a late lunch with my boyfriend. I had thought that eating out might be harder, but we are incredibly lucky and live in a place that has plenty of vegan food options (thanks Melbourne)! We were both pretty full after that, so from memory we had a lazy dinner of chopped up fresh veg and leftover dip and crackers (plus my vampire-proof vegan garlic cream cheese). Overall, despite a brief wobble on Day 2 as I adjusted to the change in habits, Week 1 has been much easier than I originally expected. I think that watching cooking videos, and reading articles to inform myself before starting this challenge has really helped make the adjustment to plant-based eating easier. Surprisingly, I think I’m eating a much larger variety of foods now than I was before, and I’m really enjoying my vegan cooking adventures so far. Thanks for reading! I’ll be back at the end of Week 2 for another update.