Vegan Tuesdays

[HankG]

I'll have to try that soup recipe! I have been bad with my Vegan days...I need to get back to that.

[November_Blue]

Ooooh, I'll join in on your Vegan Tuesdays...or more like Vegan MostDays for me. I (and my body) am much happier with more veggies and less meat.

[canary52]

Just a helpful hint to find vegan products. Look for the word parve or pareve on labels. It means containing neither meat nor dairy for those who keep kosher.

I'm allergic to dairy so I am very familar with that kind of stuff.

Also watch out for some of the Kashi and other bars; a lot of them contain dairy.

[MunaAmin]

Canary 52 i don't think that there's any parve/pareve labels on foods in Europe maybe because there are hardly any Jews in here, but lots of food are labeled 'halal' here. Halal means permitted in Arabic and it's a declaration that the food contains no pork or alcohol. There are some obvious products (like pork-free sausages) but you can also find it on baby formula, biscuits, mock meat and other stuff. It doesn't mean it is vegan/vegetarian though. Why am i writing it here then...... i don't know. It doesn't hurt to educate oneself, I guess

November_blue welcome no one here is 100% vegan i think, but we all try our best. May I ask, why did you decide to eat less meat and animal products?

[Esofia]

The parev category still contains eggs and fish, and you can get things like parev gelatine which is still made from bones. So sometimes it's useful, sometimes it's not. I've found decent vegan chocolate spreads in the parev section on occasion, although I ended up making my own chocolate spread, which I'm not allowing myself any more because I eat it all up too quickly.

I'm vegan full-time, and I was thinking of starting a general thread for vegans and vegetarians to discuss...whatever, really. Or should we just hop onto this one?

[MunaAmin]

hop on this one, you are more than welcome about the spread, sometimes i mix a spoonful of peanut butter with some honey (I know not all vegans eat honey, i do anyway) it tastes like white choc spread

Recipe for 'spring rolls' I made today:
10 filo sheets
leftover cooked rice (about 4oz)
1 head of lettuce (i used butterhead, or baby spinach, pak choi or whatever. Not iceberg though)
about 3oz shredded white cabbage
spice mix - i used fajita mix, or bbq powder, or whatever flavouring you like

Cut the lettuce into stripes, toss it in a hot pan, let it just wilt a bit. Mix with rice. Shred the cabbage and stir fry it for a bit, it still needs to be a bit crunchy. Mix with rice, season well with salt and spices. Wrap into pastry sheets and shallow fry.

[Esofia]

Ooh, spring rolls, I probably don't dare go near those either, even though I usually just brush them with a bit of oil and bake them! Mind you, I can't be bothered to make them myself these days, and the ones from the Chinese supermarket have oodles of MSG and other nasties in there.

I ate honey for my first couple of years as a vegan, and then I found out that bees are indeed routinely killed as part of commercial honey production, and stopped. Agave syrup is about the best substitute I've found, I think, though there's rather an interesting low GI syrup I've discovered which is made from various fruits and carob, tastes odd when tried alone, but rather honey-ish on toast.

It's always nice to see people eating vegan one day a week, I think it's an excellent idea. I wouldn't get too hung up on tiny ingredients, it's unlikely to make a difference at that level, just as the odd tiny bit of flour doesn't make a difference if you're eating gluten-free one day a week.

To the other full-time vegans out there: how are you dividing up your macros? I am thinking of adding a bit of protein powder to my morning porridge and seeing how I feel on a bit more protein. Soy is the best-tasting, I hear, though naturally I'll experiment.

[MunaAmin]

how much protein do you have in your diet? There is a ton of different opinions about how much we actually need, and the number can be anything from 55g to over 100g.

Why don't you try to get more protein from foods like pulses or grains? Oats have 13.5g of protein in 100g

[Esofia]

About 15% protein, and so far I think the highest I've managed in a day is 18%. I am eating lots of pulses and grains! Along with a reasonable quantity of nuts and seeds, come to that. I'm eating oats every day I have porridge, which so far is most days, and when I don't have porridge I have a nice healthy cereal which isn't far behind on the protein front. I'm being careful to combine my proteins as well.

[MunaAmin]

If you want, try to add some protein powder in your diet and see how it works. But I think that it might not be necessary. IMO, if you get your proteins over 65g per day, you should be ok.