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Vegan October

incorporating Recipes and Cooking
redsturgeon
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Vegan October

#170782

Postby redsturgeon » October 2nd, 2018, 12:29 pm

I'm going vegan for October. I agreed a challenge with my daughter that I would go vegan for the month if she would forgo alcohol.

It should be interesting to see how my body reacts to this, I am keen to continue a varied diet and ensure I get enough protein and vitamins.

Having just returned from a long gastronomic weekend in Italy I weigh 95 kilos...I wonder if that will change by Hallowe'en?

Wish me luck!

John

UncleEbenezer
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Re: Vegan October

#170814

Postby UncleEbenezer » October 2nd, 2018, 1:18 pm

What's your startingpoint for this? How near to vegan were you hitherto? Have you tried this kind of thing before, or have familiarity through having catered for (or even lived with) vegans in the past?

FWIW, I don't feel strong enough to try it on my own, but would be keen to try if I were doing it with someone. I have experience (long ago) of giving up meat: I succeeded on my second attempt, and now haven't touched it for about 25 years. My first attempt was thwarted by the autumn season: I found that without meat I was getting tired and cold, so second time round I gave up the meat while it was still warm outside.

Anyway, good luck. I'm sure you'll keep us posted.

redsturgeon
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Re: Vegan October

#170829

Postby redsturgeon » October 2nd, 2018, 1:55 pm

My starting point is as a complete omnivore. There is very little a will not eat and I enjoy all meat, fish, cheese. My daughter is completely vegan and I have shared food with her and like what she cooks. Although she has moved away now.

Mostly though I love strong flavours and if I had to eat completely bland food with no spices or garlic then I would find that harder than going vegan

I am lactose intolerant so milk is not an issue.

I currently practice the 5:2 diet and have done for several years, not sure if a will continue that for October.

John

James
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Re: Vegan October

#170843

Postby James » October 2nd, 2018, 2:19 pm

redsturgeon wrote:I currently practice the 5:2 diet and have done for several years, not sure if a will continue that for October.

... Having just returned from a long gastronomic weekend in Italy I weigh 95 kilos..

John


Hard to tell without knowing other factors, but is it fair to suggest the 5:2 diet hasn't been a great success?

redsturgeon
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Re: Vegan October

#170866

Postby redsturgeon » October 2nd, 2018, 3:54 pm

Lol...I can see why you might think that but I am 6ft 3 and reasonably well muscled, BMI around 25-26. The 5:2 has actually been great.

John

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Re: Vegan October

#170883

Postby UncleEbenezer » October 2nd, 2018, 5:40 pm

redsturgeon wrote:My starting point is as a complete omnivore. There is very little a will not eat and I enjoy all meat, fish, cheese. My daughter is completely vegan and I have shared food with her and like what she cooks. Although she has moved away now.

Mostly though I love strong flavours and if I had to eat completely bland food with no spices or garlic then I would find that harder than going vegan
John

Makes sense. You have some experience, and I'm sure you can use many of the same staples as I do - like soups, stirfries, and curries. So I guess you don't need me to tell you to avoid all those horrible things like veggieburgers and pretend-meat that some less-enlightened meat-eaters expect us to eat.

redsturgeon
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Re: Vegan October

#170890

Postby redsturgeon » October 2nd, 2018, 6:19 pm

Just made myself a stir fry with choi sum and cashew nuts. Flavoured with ginger, garlic and chilli.

I think I shall be eating plenty of nuts and pulses for the next month.

John

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Re: Vegan October

#170949

Postby 88V8 » October 2nd, 2018, 11:32 pm

Stir fry, plenty of herbs. Good way of adding flavour to veg.
Roasted veg also good.

Although I enjoy veg, I would never go vegan.

White beetroot is this year's vegetable discovery. Great raw in salad, or roasted.

Sliced apples also figure in many meals, main course as well as dessert. Cookers and eaters. Eaters sliced in a stir fry.
About the only thing apples don't go with is beef. Or eggs. Or baked beans now I think of it. Other exceptions may apply.

V8

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Re: Vegan October

#171006

Postby UncleEbenezer » October 3rd, 2018, 9:51 am

88V8 wrote:Sliced apples also figure in many meals, main course as well as dessert. Cookers and eaters. Eaters sliced in a stir fry.
About the only thing apples don't go with is beef. Or eggs. Or baked beans now I think of it. Other exceptions may apply.

V8

Hmm, not used apples in a stirfry. Must get pretty sweet (OK, not necessarily a bad thing) with them in? Don't they tend to go mushy and shed lots of water, like when stewed?

Though I do use various fruit more conventionally eaten raw. For example, avocados or bananas.

And I'll agree with you that apples go well with almost any other flavour.

kempiejon
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Re: Vegan October

#171028

Postby kempiejon » October 3rd, 2018, 11:09 am

redsturgeon wrote:Just made myself a stir fry with choi sum and cashew nuts. Flavoured with ginger, garlic and chilli.

I think I shall be eating plenty of nuts and pulses for the next month.

John

I did a stint vegetarian for a few years and tried a few vegan meals but I couldn't forgo cheese. Lots of nuts, grains seeds and pulses as you say. Tofu as you'll know readily takes any strong flavours you want to throw at it as it has little itself, a recent non meat protein find is tempeh which I think is tastier. I have not tried seitan. http://chooseveg.com/blog/whats-the-dif ... fu-tempeh/
I like inventing recipes so thinking vegan and vegetarian was a fun challenge, good luck with yours.

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Re: Vegan October

#171291

Postby GJHarney » October 4th, 2018, 6:41 am

I've been a veggie for many years, but would struggle to go vegan (the cheese, the cheese!), although I get all the arguments on animal welfare.

But to help the OP this week I found myself in a Marstons pub, and while I normally don't like the big pub chains and the food they serve I was very impressed by their new vegan menu - https://www.nomeat.marstons.co.uk/ and had the cauliflower buffalo tacos which were pretty damn good, so given Marstons pubs are nearly everywhere these days and if you fancy a pub meal this may be a good option (if you can find some vegan beer of course!).

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Re: Vegan October

#171296

Postby Pendrainllwyn » October 4th, 2018, 7:30 am

Good luck with it John.

I have been vegetarian for 33 years and haven't found it too difficult although the smell of sizzling sausages still presents a major temptation. Going to a good restaurant with carnivorous friends and having only one option on the menu to "choose" from is a frustration. I agree that most vegetarian sausages and burgers taste awful but there are a few decent tasting ones out there. I have never quite got the rationale for being vegan; providing quality food and shelter in return for some milk seems like a fair bargain to me. A plate of well cooked pasta with some parmesan cheese and a glass of wine is a culinary pleasure I do not wish to forego.

Pendrainllwyn

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Re: Vegan October

#171305

Postby UncleEbenezer » October 4th, 2018, 8:08 am

Pendrainllwyn wrote:I have never quite got the rationale for being vegan; providing quality food and shelter in return for some milk seems like a fair bargain to me.

You only get the milk by taking away and slaughtering someone's baby (the natural recipient of the milk). The dairy trade is inextricably linked with the veal market.

redsturgeon
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Re: Vegan October

#171308

Postby redsturgeon » October 4th, 2018, 8:21 am

I have to admit that I love cheese and that may be the most difficult thing for me to forgo. But I am determined to see out October and take stock at the end of the month.

Early days but so far so good and I haven't found myself dreaming of bacon and cheese.

John

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Re: Vegan October

#171341

Postby Pendrainllwyn » October 4th, 2018, 9:44 am

UncleEbenezer wrote:You only get the milk by taking away and slaughtering someone's baby (the natural recipient of the milk). The dairy trade is inextricably linked with the veal market.

Thank you for highlighting that. I shall give that more thought. The article below lays out how tough the cow's life is however it also suggests you do not need to slaughter the baby. "Leaving the baby cow with its mother would not be economically profitable at all. On the contrary: The calf would drink its mother's milk, which is supposed to be sold to humans after all. After two days as a rule, the calves are torn away from their mothers, put into calf boxes and exposed to red light. They are fed with cheap surrogate milk."
https://www.simply-live-consciously.com ... heir-milk/.

Pendrainllwyn

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Re: Vegan October

#171355

Postby Slarti » October 4th, 2018, 10:13 am

UncleEbenezer wrote:
Pendrainllwyn wrote:I have never quite got the rationale for being vegan; providing quality food and shelter in return for some milk seems like a fair bargain to me.

You only get the milk by taking away and slaughtering someone's baby (the natural recipient of the milk). The dairy trade is inextricably linked with the veal market.


From various things I have seen on TV, I would suggest that the inextricable link is with the pet food market, which is why veal is not readily available in supermarkets and butchers.

Slarti

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Re: Vegan October

#171374

Postby bungeejumper » October 4th, 2018, 11:28 am

UncleEbenezer wrote:You only get the milk by taking away and slaughtering someone's baby (the natural recipient of the milk). The dairy trade is inextricably linked with the veal market.

My nearest neighbour runs 170 Friesian cross cows (and that's a lot!) on an organic dairy farm. His £1 million automatic milking parlour allows the cows to wander in and out, any time that they want to be milked, and they spend the rest of their time hoofing naturally around the fields, except when it's too wet/cold. Strangely enough, the cows enjoy the milking parlour (soft lights, sweet music) so much that they have to be given a robotic nudge after 15 minutes so that somebody else can come in and have a go. :lol: The milking booth also detects (from their RFID ear tags) whether they need any supplements, and those are automatically dispensed at source.

So far, so good. The cows are having "a proper life" (by cow standards) in which they have a considerable degree of autonomy. But my neighbour says that it isn't quite that simple. For one thing, he says, not even veal processors can take all of his male calves, so they fetch nothing at auction and are often humanely slaughtered as early as possible. The mothers grieve loudly for them for one night (we hear them calling, and it's horrible) and then they get straight back to business as usual, which means munching grass and waddling to and fro from the automatic milking parlour. Cows have pretty small brains really, although I accept that this isn't the vegans' point.

The one thing that nobody ever misses is the presence of a real live bull! I don't know how many Fools have ever seen a Friesian bull, but they're absolutely massive and they have an evil temper, which is why you don't find them on farms. :) Sorry cows, but no proper sex life for you. Human lives depend on it.

Apologies for going off topic. Me, I need cheese because I can't absorb milk very well, and I've never tasted anything soya-based that hasn't tasted of nothing much unless it's full of chilli. I've had more than my share of extruded veggie mush over the years, but always keen to hear of alternatives as long as they don't involve tofu. :|

BJ

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Re: Vegan October

#171396

Postby Meatyfool » October 4th, 2018, 12:52 pm

Robert Llewellyn did an episode of Fully Charged recently on the subject of cows. Specifically with regard to the massive amount of land set aside to provide us with meat/dairy.

The piece wasn’t about bullying you into going vegan, just trying to make you think. Indeed it has me: I was vegetarian for over 20 years, but now eat meat occasionally. I may well return to the fold.

The issue now is not animal welfare, it is climate change. Not just Cow Farts, people. Destruction of the Amazon for beef cattle etc.

I would not be at all surprised if this rather odd episode was a requirement for Ecotricity’s sponsorship of Fully Charged Live early this year. The Ecotricity CEO Is a committed vegan.

Meatyfool..

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Re: Vegan October

#171397

Postby vrdiver » October 4th, 2018, 12:54 pm

bungeejumper wrote:not even veal processors can take all of his male calves, so they fetch nothing at auction and are often humanely slaughtered as early as possible.

Countryfile did a piece on this issue a while ago, covering one attempt to get the supermarkets to stock more veal (rose veal) but quite simply the public perception of veal being a cruel product (as indeed it can be) meant that there was very little uptake even for the much more humane rose veal and a lot of complaints from viewers about Countryfile supporting the veal industry. No doubt all written whilst supping a self-righteous cup of hot milk.

http://tv.bt.com/tv/tv-news/countryfile ... 4076670340

(worth scanning the comments for a bit of insight as to the hurdle dairy farmers have to overcome)

VRD

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Re: Vegan October

#171847

Postby GeoffF100 » October 6th, 2018, 9:34 am

I have ate a whole food plant based diet for over ten years, and it is not a problem. You need to tale Vitamin B12, of course. You soon get used to any wholesome diet. Processed food is designed to be addictive, so you have to get used to food that is not loaded with salt, sugar and saturated fat. Of course, you can eat a heavily processed plant based diet that is loaded with those things, but I would not recommend it.

A good model for protein is two parts whole grain (e.g. oats or pasta) to one part beans. I pretty much meet my protein requirements with breakfast. Add a wide variety of vegetables and some fruit, and you are onto a winner. Dark green leafy vegetables are the most important ones. Adding some nuts and seeds appears to be good too. Herbs and spices are also good, as are mushrooms.


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