Food without the angst - Vegan SW

Hi, I am starting again and thought I'd have a nice new diary to go with it.

I'm vegan for ethical reasons which means I allow myself a lot of junk (w e l l ..... not unlimited) unlike the people who eat vegan for health reason.

Previously I had another diary which was very personal - I want to keep this one to food. Mainly.

I will post at the end of the day what I have eaten and every so often I'll go to my old diary and bring a recipe or two over here as there were some nice quick and easy things to eat on it and hopefully that will be of use to the vegans who have joined this forum.

here are some food ideas from my old diary:

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Yummy samosas! I think I got them from the SW site, I've not bothered checking, I think they said 1 syn each but that sounds a bit unlikely. Anyway, I had as many as I could snatch away from hungry family who liked them too:

recipe

chop up onions potatoes and boil with peas. Season with stock cube,, curry powder and cumin to your own desire. Cook till soft and mushy

Get long thin strips of filo pastry and spray with fry light and fold into samosa shapes. Impossible to describe and not so easy to do either, we had some interesting failures and bake in a hot oven till golden brown and crispy. Spraying another layer of fry light on top of the assembled uncooked samosas seems to be good too.

Remove from oven, fight off hungry children and eat.

While hunting in the freezer for something for those children I mentioned earlier - I'm not such a heartless mum really, I found some melon I'd chopped up and frozen yonks ago ... mmmm ... that was a good discovery.

Stir fry with tofu:

You need two frying pans and a pudding bowl sized container for the noodles.

Frying pan 1: Stir fry either a ready prepared stir fry mix or use your own veggies, My mix has bean sprouts, onion, cabbage carrot and white cabbage. Don't bother with fry light, just use water and a stock cube

Frying pan 2: use frylight to scramble a carton of silken tofu with fresh grated ginger, crushed garlic, soy sauce and tumeric (later edit - I now just mix all my tofu ingredients together when I'm doing scrambled tofu and microwave them I would expect that to work here as well)

Pudding basin: pour boiling water over brown rice thread noodles and leave them to soften while attending to the frying pans.

When all is cooked, combine in one of the frying pans and mix it all together, chase the rest of the family out of the house and enjoy. You might want to add more soy sauce if you didn't put much in earlier.

Sushi Recipe: (minimal syns for the nori unfortunately - 1 or a half syn per sheet, if someone has accurate figures please let me know - the rest is all free)

Ingredients - sticky rice, gerkins, salt, wasabi paste and soy sauce, sheets of nori

Boil up the rice (I've got a fair bit of rissotto rice in atm and find that works well even though purists use only sushi rice) with a bit of salt and mix in some vinegar from the gerkins when it is cooked to the point of stickyness.

Lay out a sheet of the nori and place a line of the rice on it and put some strips of gerkin on top of that and roll it up. Moisten to get the sushi rolls to stick together then slice into smaller rolls,

make a dipping sauce by diluting some of the wasabi with soya sauce and eat.

You can use other pickles, marinaded tofu and if you are feeling reckless with syns avocado is nice too. I like pickled peppers too.

Something I invented a while back when I had a lot of cooked rice that needed using.


ingredients: overcooked sticky rice, a bunch of parsley, bouillon powder, instant mashed potato and a tin of baked beans with the sauce washed off.

Chop the parsley very small and squidge everything except the instant mashed potato together with your hands so the beans mash up with the rice. Then add the potato stuff bit by bit until you have a stiff dough that will go into balls you can flatten into burger shapes. Put in oven with either frylight or baking paper to stop sticking and bake till the top is golden brown and crispy. Then turn over and cook a bit longer so the underneath gets the same.

It is very nice, creamy and soft in the middle but a bit chewy with a crunchy outside. All free foods and the beans makes a SS component.

Here is my wonderful spinach and fake chicken curry. All free and SS on green days and so easy to make I was amazed.

Frozen spinach, chopped onions, stock cube, lots of curry powder, RealEat chicken style lumps.

Dissolve the stock cube in water and combine everything in a bowl and microwave till well cooked. It is nice when freshly cooked, and left overs the next day are extremely good.

Today's food. My mealtimes are a bit strange sometimes, given that I have to time one lot of anti biotics around food very strictly.

Breakfast: 1 Nak'd bar. Nominally 7 syns but as it has almonds and dates (are dates still a HEXB?) I will count it as healthy extras and a few syns.

Lunch: cooking now, some sainsbury's instant potato stuff made up with half a stock pot. I shall make the mix a bit stiffer than usual and fry little cakes of it (in free frylight of course) to go with the baked beans carrots and green beans. Oooooh, no, I will mash the veggies that were left over from last night into the potato mix and fry it all up together.

Supper, I would like to make a rice salad with rice, washed baked beans, tomatoes, onions, cucumber, gerkhins and pickled peppers if I can find all the ingredients. It needs lots of pickles to give it some taste, and I use herbamare or some other seasoned salty stuff sprinkled on as well. Sadly, I've run out of nutritional yeast - that's nice on it as well.

I've had an apple and expect to eat more during the day for snacks and maybe a satsuma or two.

HEXA will be as usual 700 ml of unsweetened tesco own brand soya milk

I think it would be a good idea for me to re-start ...

yesterday's food: Lots of apples and satsumas

Fry's low fat sausages (the braii ones are the same nutritional value as the old low fat ones I can't find anymore. they used to be free on the SW website but have disapeared along with all the other Fry's products) which I consider to be a free food. They were nice with frylight fried mushrooms and tinned tomatoes. That was a success Express sort of meal which I would like to experiment with.

Potato salad with tomatoes, chickpeas, onions and balsamic vinegar

A large bowl of (woops, unweighed) all bran which I took to be 2 X HEXB

syns: I had a large bowl of sainsburries walnut and pecan crunch - my son decided he didn't want it and old habits of not wanting to see a new nice cereal being binned led to me eating it instead. So I expect that's a couple of day's worth of syns so will be very low or no syns today.

HEXA X 2: Approx 700ml unsweetened soya milk in barley cup and on the cereals.

Note to self: More weighing and measuring would be a good thing

Hiyah! popping by to subscribe

Hiya Vegan*4*Life,

thanks for popping over.

Today's food is Success Express so far but my tummy is rumbling while lunch cooks so I'm staving off the hunger pangs while the pasta finishes by typing here.

Breakfast: Scrambled tofu with tinned plum tomatoes and mushrooms. Barley cup with some almond milk
Lunch: Pasta with a packet of frozen stir fry veggies I found in the freezer. I cooked them with tomato puree and a stock pot and sprinkled nutritional yeast on the top. I'll have some pistachios for my HEXB afterwards.

Snacks: apples, tomatoes and more barley cup

Today is going to be a no syns day as I overdid the mample and pecan cereal last night. I've no idea of the syn value but assume it was a lot.

Supper was a concoction of green beans, mushy peas and spinach. Not the most exciting of combinations but I didn't have a lot of veggies in the fridge. I also had a couple of syns - Approved Food order was delivered today and there were a few packets of those Swiss Herb lozengey things, 4 of them = 1syn. Or possibly a syn and a half so it was 2/3 syns, the rest of my days allowance can be knocked off yesterdays over indulgance.

Yet more Barley cup, apples and soya milk

ETA I had a hwolemeal fat free pitta bread too so I suppose either that or half my pistachios should be sinned. Ho hum, so much for SE

Which stockpots do you use and I just googled Approved Foods is it any good? I will take a decent look when I get chance. I have seen some of these sites before but the pnp was always steep. What do you reckon on it? I get hubbie those swiss lozengers, he likes them too.

I use the Knorr ones. But only because I got them cheap off AF. I love AF but I'm a bit of a hoarder and like a bargain. They are bad for your cupboard space and can be a bit frustrating as they don't have the ingredients of things so you have to google like crazy particularly on obscure and foreign goodies. I bought some pickled cabbage from them never suspecting it would have anything untoward in it but it had lactose as an ingredient! It could have been the synthetic one I suppose like they use in olives but I was a bit miffed.

But right now they have tofu for 50p, I think there is still some rice milk, the worcester sauce is vegan, and AFAIK they are still doing free delivery for new customers. But at my house ... OK, its confession time ... my husband is getting so worried about the full kitchen that yesterday's order came while he was out and I haven't told him about it, just got the soya milk (sorry - I had the last of it) hidden under the settee.

They even have vegan chocolate sometimes I got a large batch of the choices caramels for 75p each. But personally there are some things like grain based products I wouldn't buy much of when out of date. They had a load of organic Crazy Jack's in a while back that was VERY out of date, I got some cous cous to try and you could taste it was too old. I've had flour I've stored too long and pasta too so I would't buy that unless it was only about 6 months past its bb date.

As far as I know, they are still doing free p&P for new customers but my last two orders have only been £3 for 50 kilos, previously its been £5 something which isn't bad considering supermarket delivery charges or petrol or buses.

Today's food:

bowl of veggie soup
plate of baked beans and Linda McC sausages - the free ones with rosemary and red onion
plate of swede, potato, green beans and Linda McC sausages again! I desert spn of walnut oil HEXB for my omega 3
1 Alpro vanilla desert pot - 5 syns
S/F squash and barley cup with Alpro light soya milk

snack before bed will be 2 weetabix (HEXB) and the rest of my soya milk

a day totally on plan yay!
eta; too full for snack before bed and yay! Well done me for acting on that fact. I also had 4 swiss herby lozenges at 1 syn so a total of 6 syns for the day, 1.5 As and 1 B


4 apples

Micci said:

I use the Knorr ones. But only because I got them cheap off AF. I love AF but I'm a bit of a hoarder and like a bargain. They are bad for your cupboard space and can be a bit frustrating as they don't have the ingredients of things so you have to google like crazy particularly on obscure and foreign goodies. I bought some pickled cabbage from them never suspecting it would have anything untoward in it but it had lactose as an ingredient! It could have been the synthetic one I suppose like they use in olives but I was a bit miffed.

But right now they have tofu for 50p, I think there is still some rice milk, the worcester sauce is vegan, and AFAIK they are still doing free delivery for new customers. But at my house ... OK, its confession time ... my husband is getting so worried about the full kitchen that yesterday's order came while he was out and I haven't told him about it, just got the soya milk (sorry - I had the last of it) hidden under the settee.

They even have vegan chocolate sometimes I got a large batch of the choices caramels for 75p each. But personally there are some things like grain based products I wouldn't buy much of when out of date. They had a load of organic Crazy Jack's in a while back that was VERY out of date, I got some cous cous to try and you could taste it was too old. I've had flour I've stored too long and pasta too so I would't buy that unless it was only about 6 months past its bb date.

As far as I know, they are still doing free p&P for new customers but my last two orders have only been £3 for 50 kilos, previously its been £5 something which isn't bad considering supermarket delivery charges or petrol or buses.

Click to expand...

Awww I shouldn't smile.... but I did, had visions of you stashing soya milk under the sofa....... Will deffo have a look. Thanks for the advice. Those choices are mega expensive and I only tried them once. Not my taste but for 75p would get them for son. Can't remember if hubbie likes them. I do like the odd piece of moo free as it's smooth because of the rice milk. Will you go to the fete?

Oh goodness, I had an extra jump on the scales and found I was down to 210 .... that means I've lost 10lbs now, I'm so pleased. At the start it seems pointless, as what difference does a pound or two make? But when you've been at it a while and those pounds here and there add up and clothes start to feel looser (again ... sigh...) it really is all worthwhile.

WELL DONE

the usual large quantities of apples, LMcC sausages, potatoes, green beans, slices of Fry's slicing sausage - not weighed or calculated so lets just say 'lots of syns' and forget about the Tesco soft 'cheese' I had planned.

Later there will be oven crisped kale with a double HEXB allowance of olive oil, possibly with chick peas and sweet peppers, I'm not sure yet

Alpro light soya milk and barley cup, water and s/f squash

Breakfast was baked beans (ss) and the free Linda McCartney sausages, lunch was a bit more of the crispy kale with olive oil (HEXB) ... I think that was it. Supper was a rather nice chillli bean concoction with rice that the kittens loved. Ah, running off with one kidney bean at a time. Our cats have generally had quite varied tastes. I've also had a couple of bananas, 20 cashews (HEXB) a few apples, 1 syn worth of the swiss herby lozenges and 4 syns worth of chewing gum. Ad a nominal couple of syns for licks and tastes and we'll call it a 7 syn day. HEXA (x2) has been around 800 mls of Alpro light soya milk with my barley cup. Add some s/f squash and water ad that;s been my day's intake.

I've started the day with about 10 syns worth of rather nice chewy white bread and have a dilemma.

That 210 I achieved seems to have been a blip - I've been 211 for the last couple of days. Now, my old habit was to do a fruit fast for a couple of days before WI to get down again. But this was part of my binging/fasting unhealthy approach to food so I'm not sure. Right now I'm not binging and like to feel I'm out of the cycle but I've felt like that before and am not sure how solod this new feeling of strength is.

However, I've not binged the last couple of weeks despite some pretty heavy emotional stuff around my son who has multiple m/h 'issues'. I'm still not finding an outlet for stress though, I hold it painfully in my jaw and neck.

So, I don't know. Apples for the rest of today and tomorrow or lentils beans and rice with salad?

Positively, my boy and I have a run scheduled for sometime today. However, the sky is grey, the wind is picking up and running could well be unpleasant in an hour or so ... we shall see.

Hi popping over to subcribe... was a pesceretarain (sp) for years and was putting some serious thought into going bk but after reading vegan4life diary that on a ethical scale doesnt make sense so im putting some serious thought into becoming vegan look forward to reading your diary