I started my week by spending a weirdly long time perusing the veg and fruit section of my local Co-op … wow OK I know I’m a fairly novice gardener and therefore my knowledge of seasonal veg is fairly limited but hey I had a mild panic about how I will live without fresh tomatoes!  I then tracked the country of origin of veg from COFCO - my local veg box delivery who aim to supply from local farmers as much as possible and breathed a sigh of relief  - the asparagus season is upon us – I will survive but I needed to source local onions as COFCO’s were transported from Holland.  I mailed them to let them know why I needed to change my order and they sent a “Good luck e mail”.  I felt that with their luck I was inspired to continue searching out more local food. Continue reading →

Yummy Scrummy Vegan Carrot Muffin

Yesterday I craved cake. At first I thought this was a problem as I’m halfway through the vegan challenge, and every recipe I could think of was decidedly non-vegan.

Then inspiration struck! I did the vegan baking workshop last week, didn’t I? Why not have a go at baking something without two of my best kitchen friends – butter and eggs. I Googled ‘vegan carrot cake’ as I had five carrots that needed using up, and found a whole slew of delicious looking recipes. The one I chose was called Voluptuous Vegan Carrot Cake with Zesty Lemon Icing and was on the blog ‘An Ode to Mung Beans’. How could anyone pass that one by? Continue reading →

Edinburgh Farmers' Market

As a self-employed, self-funded student, money is a persuasive factor in what I buy.  However, although I’ve been vegetarian for a couple of years, recently I’ve been wondering if that’s any better (or possibly worse!) for the environment than a meat-based diet.  While Googling ‘sustainable food and budgets’, I came across Cambridge Carbon Footprint website, and decided to join the ‘eating well on a budget’ challenge remotely from Edinburgh.

Already I feel like I’ve discovered lots of changes I could make to my shopping without bursting a budget: Continue reading →

hummus

It’s the first day of the weeklong Sustainable Food challenge, with various options available, and I am determined to cut my portion sizes, as I know I eat too much, and that is just as bad for the environment as eating highly processed imported supermarket food! (not to mention bad for my health…) I’m also eating local, seasonal vegetables, only vegan food (except for honey, which I have on my porridge every morning) and cooking things from scratch as much as possible. My main imported foods are pulses, as I need a source of non-animal protein, Continue reading →

This is my second real life attempt at “Going vegan”. My first attempt was in 1987 as a seventeen year old who wasn’t in control of buying food, living in a small Welsh village with an extremely close friend whose family ran a milk dairy! I lasted a year – it was hard!

In 2013 my second attempt at Going Vegan was totally inspired by the weeklong CCF vegan challenge and by a few friends who have made the shift to plant based diets. I’d contemplated becoming vegan since the new year but the CCF challenge came at exactly the right time Continue reading →

Thanks to a bit of prep at the weekend my first two days of the vegan challenge have been yummy! This is the 2nd time I’ve taken part in the vegan challenge; I did the one at the end of February too. It feels easier the second time around and all because I’m better prepared this time and less skeptical about whether I’ll be able to eat nice things. So Monday’s meal was a delicious chickpea stew with a jacket potato and Tuesday’s was some lentil burgers and ratatouille. And while I look forward to tonight’s butter bean and pepper bake with cous cous I’m going to tuck into some vegan chocolate raisins I discovered at the weekend. As I said before – yummy!

Spicy veg casserole

Well, 11 of us managed to complete the February Eat Vegan! week and in the main we thoroughly enjoyed it. Not everyone came to the excellent bring-and-share meal that Helen wrote about last time, but here are a few comments from the emails flying around among those who took part in the challenge:

“…the good news is that I’m still a vegan …. and enjoying it!” (Miriam, 2 weeks later) Continue reading →

haricot bean salad

It’s been interesting this week, as I wanted to carry on with my local eating as much as possible as well as participating in the vegan challenge and I didn’t know how manageable that would be. In fact it hasn’t been too bad: the main imported things I’ve eaten have been dried pulses (haricot beans (delicious as a salad with vinaigrette!), butter beans, red lentils, mung beans – sprouted), tinned tomatoes, raisins and rice cakes. Otherwise I’ve had lots of local organic vegetables: Continue reading →

I’m five days into the vegan challenge and with some advanced planning last weekend (I started the challenge on Monday) it’s been fairly straight forward. However, the downfall in my planning has been honey. Continue reading →

My first day of the challenge started with a dream about not being able to stick to the challenge by accidentally eating some dairy products.

My breakfast was a bowl of muesli and some soya milk which tasted fine.  I had a long day, much more time away from my home than usual and was concerned that I’d feel hungry.

Continue reading →

Making hummus is so easy. Actually, when I found out how easy it was I was kicking myself thinking about all the times I have bought hummus from Sainsburys! The homemade stuff is the real deal and it is so much cheaper than shop varieties.  Continue reading →

With my cupboards chock full of delicious vegan goodies, I was spoilt for choice when it came to choosing what to make. My fantastic new cookbook (1,000 Vegan Recipes) didn’t exactly help me narrow the choice either! Of course a observing vegan diet involves restrictions, but that is certainly not to say that the diet is limited and there is plenty of scope for experimentation.  Continue reading →