'How To Go Vegan' Notes - Courses all year around, here at Harmony Hall

How To Go Vegan Course

So we talked about reasons for going vegan:

Save the Animals – 70 Billion killed a year for the food industry

Save the Environment – Gas Emmissions from Herds and Intensive Farming

Feed the World – If crops were eaten rather than fed to animals, everyone’d eat

Health Concerns – Dairy and Eggs linked to Cancer

Weight Management – Readymade foods have meat, dairy, honey, eggs or at least whey powder, gelatin or lactic acid (derivatives) so vegans avoid them and so by great chance avoid sugar and salt-laden foods too. This means conscious eating equals weight loss. 

The risk to vegans is too many carbs as veg and potatoes and pasta etc are all carbs in part! The solution is to have small portions of carbs and include protein at every meal.  Eat often and prosper: 6 small meals a day keeps your metabolism busy, energy up and toning happening!

Vegan Bread –

With the added bonus of no yeast, fully organic, rye potential, gluten free potential, no hot cupboard needed for rising the dough and works with whatever you have handy.

2lb dry ingredients altogether – flour, bran, spelt, rye flour (half a pound max)

 3 teaspoons baking powder

2 teaspoons molasses/treacle

1 teaspoon baking soda

Mix dry ingredients

Heat spoon in small bit of water for molasses to be liquid

Add nearly a litre of liquid – nut milk/soya milk/water

Grease and flour 3 bread tins

Divide up mixture and add tomatoes/walnuts etc if wanted.

Sprinkle pumpkin seeds and sunflower seeds on the top.

Put on at 200 or 180 for 35 minutes and then 10 minutes more once you get them out of the tins and placed upside down in the oven.

Cool on a rack – under a t towel in winter and not in summer, so crust isn’t too crunchy.

Soups

Kales, cabbage, garlic – protein: beans of any sort that you have soaked or tinned.

Carrot, lentils

Potato leek

Just start with onion, vegan boullion, garlic and ginger at the end for max health or not at all, if you intend to dance with someone.

Rice crispy buns

Real Chocolate/Dark cooking chocolate/Cocoa, sugar (or golden syrup), tiny bit  of nut or soy milk and warm slowly on the hob

Mix with rice crispies.

I thought this couldn’t go wrong but ours was more like delux cocoa pops than buns!

Hummus

Cooked Chickpeas – olive oil, organic lemon (when you find organic lemons buy them. Grate rind  and keep in freezer for snacks and teas and total instant health (20 times the strength of chemo therapy I’m told and good for all sorts) and keep the lemons there too and defrost when you want the juice for a round of hummus. Add a little water so that the mixture will whizz with the whizzer and not block the blades entirely. Maybe salt and pepper or paprika or tahini. But delicious in anyway. I also have a simple tin of chick peas for a snack with a few teaspoons of apple cider vinegar over them and a flax oil or olive oil – basically you’re getting good fats, the pea protein and the vinegar that heals joints, yeast imbalance and nearly every other complaint of the body, disguised as a light salad. PS If you’re getting a whizzer for the first time, get a stainless steel rather than a plastic one,. Can’t remember why now but just sharing that!

Shepherd’s pie

Potatoes cut small and add boiling or cold water and a sprinkle of salt

Keep checking with fork for when soft and ready for mashing.

Mash with a spoon of Pure margarine (any dairy free margarine whether sunflower, soya or olive), splash of soy milk, salt and pepper.

Pie Filling

Prepare onion and sauté in olive oil

Then add soya mince with a half an inch of boiling water

Frozen kale

Tinned tomato

Mustard

Mixed herbs

Steamed carrots

Spoon into a dish and flatten potato evenly on top. Grate vegan cheese on top. I love the soy free Cheezly cheddar and the Smoked Cheese by Bute Island. Everything can be ordered by your health food shop in sufficient amounts to make it affordable. But be warned the smoked cheese lasts for ever but the ‘easy listening’ cheezly and slices last about one sitting.

I recommend a few definite s for your cupboard. Probiotics keep your stomach with the right bacteria working away and undoing all the damage of the yeast and sugar from the past.

In my first seven days survival kit I also included:

Boullion (vegan, organic, gluten free) is like a vegetarian stock cube essentially and a stash of this adds taste to any sauce or even rice.

One kilo Brown Rice

A tin of beans and lentils that are always there for you

Cooking chocolate is not too appetizing to eat but means you have the materials for rice crispy buns. Etc.

Vegetarian mince from the health store or even Holland and Barratt. Its super cheap, lasts for ever and only needs a momentary rehydration and seasoning to ready it.

Oat cakes, rice cakes and Tartex (delicious vegan pate in a tube).

Lidl gourmet muesli, 50% fruit and nuts is vegan and went in the survival kit.

Frozen meals:

Vegan Shepherd’s Pie,

Tandori curry with Tofu, Coconut milk and Pak Choi.

Vegan Chilli Con Carne – The Lidl sauce of this name is vegan miraculously but to make it yourself you just sauté the onions, add chilli, kidney beans (soaked overnight and cooked) soya mince, Vegan Tom Yum Paste, tomato paste, a tin of organic chopped tomatoes, carrots, frozen peas and let them infuse the flavours until you have the rice cooked. If you can’t find an ingredient, use something else. Everything seems to work, when you cook with compassion and a sense of adventure.

Monday –

readybrek, apple

bread and hummus lunch

chilli con carne

Tuesday –

Bread and soup lunch

Wednesday

Thursday

Friday

Saturday

Sunday

Shopping 

Plantgoodness.ie is a good Irish online vegan food supply and is where I get my vegan organic dog and cat food too! However, don't forget to support your local health store for going to the trouble of stocking and sourcing great vegan alternatives and organic supplies!

Soya and nut milks for tea and cereal and cooking

Hazelnut milk is magic for coffee

It is really a tea party to be vegan!