Going Vegan

Slowly, might I add.

Is anyone on Mibba vegan?

At the start of last year, I decided I'd become vegetarian. I stuck to a vegetarian diet mainly, besides not caring about bugs I eat (I'm not ready to give up Tim Tams or jellybeans!) and occasionally eating something with gelatin in it, like cake from The Cheesecake Shop. Or by accident like with some yoghurt I used to LOVE and miss dearly.

This year I've decided to go vegan every Friday. I know I'm not ready just yet to give up things like cheese, yoghurt and cream, and that I really can't be bothered looking at everything I go to eat wondering if it has milk or eggs in it. But doing this once a week is a way for me to be slowly finding vegan alternatives to things I enjoy and to research what I can and can't eat.

So far I've found that I don't mind soy milk (I thought I was intolerant to it for the longest time) and I can stomach rice milk. Last Friday for dinner I made cheesy cauliflower rice and it turned out SO GOOD despite the fact that it had no dairy in it. I ate literally half a cauliflower over 2 days. And today I made a quick vegetable stir fry with chicken flavoured rice using a vegan friendly stock cube and frozen veggies. I'm really picky with what vegetables I like and can't stand green beans or capsicum, which are in every stir fry mix, so I just chucked in some broccoli, cauliflower, carrot, corn and peas. I hate peas but they're so tiny I couldn't taste them. I'm looking forward to having the other half of that for lunch tomorrow.

I'm not sure yet what I'll do for next week. Probably another stir fry, because they're so easy. Maybe this time with noodles and some tofu. Or I might try and recreate a vegan version of beef stroganoff, if that's even possible. I'll have to think on it.

It's really exciting to find that I can still eat a lot of what I normally do. It's more about making choices, like buying a certain brand of bread you already sometimes buy because it's vegan, or buying certain biscuits.

Really the only thing killing me right now is that tea doesn't taste the same without cow's milk in it. I may have to try different teas. I've tried every type of milk except cashew milk and none of them are quite perfect. I probably drink too much tea anyway.

I think after a year of this I'll be used to a different milk and will hopefully have tried some different recipes out.