How To

It's not difficult to be vegan!

Being vegan can seem like a pretty big change to make in your life - but I promise it's not hard, you just have to get used to thinking a tiny bit differently.

I can happily sustain a completely vegan diet with just trips to any large supermarket. I go to a health food shop maybe once every month/2 months to pick up essentials. I go more often if I am feeling particularly well off and have the time, but it's not essential that I do.


If I want to make a recipe vegan and I'm not sure how, I simply google it and a zillion recipes come up. It is as easy as that. You will find the answer, and it will taste good.

Lots of food you already eat is vegan, or there are simple vegan switches

Pasta and tomato sauce, veggie chilli, beans on toast, salad, mushroom chow mein, pitta breads, veggie curry, hummus, chips... all of these things you already eat are basically vegan anyway. There are hundreds of other things that you eat that can be super easily veganised by simply swapping an ingredient or two. 

Meat substitutes/protein 

Eat quorn sausages/meat sausages? In the UK you can swap to Linda McCartney versions, which are vegan. Linda McCartney sausage rolls and deep country pies are vegan too, and pretty much a staple in my diet. Yum!

Most supermarket own brand veggie mince is vegan too - just double check for egg white in the ingredients.

Tofu can also be used in a wide variety of ways if you want a recognisable block of protein in your meal. For a 'meaty' texture, don't underestimate the humble mushroom or some lovely lentils either! I personally don't get on with seitan, but some people like that too.

I could happily eat these all day.

The most important thing is to not get too hung up on protein. We need very little protein every day to get by perfectly happily, and you can find it in lots of different things, like soya (e.g. tofu, soya milk or mince), wholegrains (brown rice and pasta), pulses (any peas, beans or lentils), cereals and nuts as well as the meat substitutes knocking around. 

If you're used to eating the 'meat and two veg' sort of diet, supermarket substitutes will see you through. Once you start branching out a little, you'll see that a chunk of protein doesn't have to be a focus of a meal. 

What about dairy?

There are widely available vegan 'dairy' products. 

Want some yoghurt? Try the Alpro Soya ones, they come in little fruit flavour pots or you can get the large natural yoghurt pots too in every major supermarket in the UK.

Margarine? Easy! My favourite is Pure, also in the supermarket and it comes in a few different varieties, like sunflower.

Milk is another simple switch, and one you might want to experiment with a bit. Back in the day, if you didn't like soya it was tough. But there's been a recent explosion of all sorts of dairy free milk to try. 

You could give oat, rice, hazlenut or almond a go... they are all available in supermarkets now. My favourite is still sweetened soya, and the supermarket value brands suit me the best. It also helps that they are pretty cheap. 

If you want to be a real fancy-pants, you can even make your own milk with oats or nuts at home. But you are way more committed than me if you do that!

Cheese - Tesco in the UK are now doing their own range of vegan cheese. You'll also probably find some different options in your local health food shop. Personally, I haven't found any I like, but mainly because I thought the texture of cheese in general was weird to start with, vegan or dairy! 

I find that most of the time, nutritional yeast flakes take the place of cheese in most my meals. I sprinkle it on spaghetti bolognese, I add it to homemade pesto and I add it to a white sauce to make a cheese sauce. Easy :) It's also delicious on hot, buttery toast, and it's a great source of vitamin b12. 

Also, Jus-Rol puff pastry is vegan, which means you don't have to be without homemade sausage rolls, strudel (which is usually vegan anyway), puff pastry pies or anything else you dream of concocting with puff pastry, which is a nightmare to make from scratch. 

Do a little bit of reading!

It's always good to have an awareness of what you need to be eating, to make sure you factor it in to your diet. 

The Vegan Society resources pages  have great information to help you along. It's like second nature to me now, and it's great to know more about the benefits of the food that you're shovelling down anyway, so you can feel smug about how healthy you are, hehe. 

As well as that - start label reading. You might be surprised to find stuff that you normally eat is vegan anyway. Or you might find that some of the stuff you eat has very strange ingredients. There's only one way to find out! It only takes a second and can be a truly enlightening experience.

Start reading blogs and cookbooks as well. There are hundreds and hundreds of blogs and books out there. I have a bit of a thing about vegan cookbooks (sorry bank account), but blogs are absolutely FREE! Check out the ones on my homepage for a good start. 

Some blogs and books are american, but do not let this put you off. Google the ingredients you don't recognise, and google what temperature 748 fahrenheit is in celsius and you're away! 

I also recommend you get a set of cheap plastic measuring cups - as they are invaluable and such an easy way to measure. I wish we used cups here, stupid scales. 

Don't give yourself a hard time

Get in from a really hard day? Don't try and make your own spelt ravioli on a bed of something or other with added goodness. Just have something easy like beans on toast. The more things you try and make when you have the time, the better repertoire of easy quick meals you'll have - so don't despair. I am still adding to my weekly things I like to cook. 

If you think it will be easier to go vegan more slowly, do that. When I went back to it, I cut out eggs first, and cut out cheese a bit later, until I'd got my bearings and started putting nutritional yeast on everything. 

Don't be hard on yourself if you slide off the bandwagon either. Every meal decision you make that's positive is contributing to the cause, and associating slips with lots of negative emotions could lead you to get put off being vegan entirely. This is something I'm still dealing with, so you're not the only one either!

Treat yourself - get some lovely dark chocolate, or make vegan cupcakes. If you haven't been the healthiest eater, don't kick yourself for having some crisps etc. Buy yourself a present for passing a vegan landmark. Vegan for a week? Celebrate! Or get someone to bet you can't do it for a month/2 months. That works really well as a motivation.

Encourage your friends and family to be supportive too - or at the least, not unsupportive. Most people will only be negative because they're worried you will keel over from starvation, or because they don't understand it and so immediately get defensive. Take the time to explain all the lovely types of food you are eating, and that you've got a good awareness of your nutritional needs.

So if you have a delicious meal, tell people about it! Cook for other people, bake them cakes (check they're nice first - this can backfire if you're rubbish at baking) and spring it on them afterwards that they were VEGAN! 

Become the annoying happy vegan who is always banging on about lentils! Or maybe not, that's up to you. 

Please feel free to ask me any questions, I will do my best to answer them, or point you in the direction of someone or something more capable of providing you with some good info.