This month, 3 of our team members are taking part in ‘Veganuary’, and being vegan for the whole month of January! We are hoping that the challenge will help us to become more aware of what being vegan involves, and also the reasons why being vegan is so important to people. So, we have decided to do a blog after each week of the challenge to see how each of our vegan team members are feeling!
Lisa
I’ve decided to give Veganuary a go as a few years back I was actually vegetarian for 2 years, and I really did enjoy it – I ended up trying so many new things that I hadn’t tried before. I also felt it was a great challenge to start the new year, and also I thought it was a much healthier way to start the new year too.
The start of the vegan process was of course doing the food shop – I found this quite difficult if I’m honest! I did a lot of research beforehand, finding recipes, working out what I could and couldn’t eat – and there really are some amazing recipes out there. Some of the meals I decided to try included vegan sausages, mash, veg and gravy, vegan pizza with chips, and a vegan 3 bean chilli.
I did find that Aldi have a downloadable PDF list that shows all of the products that are vegan, which was really useful to have before we went shopping. I think some things are vegan, but don’t actually state it on their labels, so I was never sure what I could eat and what I couldn’t! Using the list clarified all of that for me.
Aldi did have a fair amount of vegan food which was great. I also went into Asda and was hoping to get the meat free Richmond sausages – but unfortunately they didn;t have any, so I decided to go for some other meat free sausages.
Breakfast was quite easy really; I’ve had toast, and I’ve also tried a banana french toast too; this was a little soggy without the egg, but was still something different and it tasted great! Lunches have included soups, and pitta breads with falafel, salad and hummus. I’ve tried a range of different recipes for teas, but found that my favourite meal for this week would have to be our mushroom and garlic bolognese.
James
So I decided to try the Veganuary challenge, and my wife Rachel decided to join me.
The biggest challenges so far have been creating the week’s menu, and the preparation time for dinner.
Breakfast and lunch have been easy, but dinner takes some real thought. We have created Courgette, Leek and Tofu Korma, Chilli Con Tofu and also tried some plant based pizzas.
Ian
The first week of Veganuary has seen me chopping a lot of veg, haha! I have cooked kofta burgers, carrot and sweetcorn fritters, spicy tofu fajitas and vegetable curry; so far, all good!
I’ve been using Jamie Oliver’s cookbook and have really enjoyed the recipes.