Making transition from vegitarian to vegan??

Question

Well.. I have only been vegetarian for about a week now, although my whole life I have never really been much of a meat eater anyway. I just ate chicken when it was put in front of me and I made tuna sandwiches for lunch sometimes. After watching "meet your meat" today, I threw up.. I just can't handle what they do to those animals.

How would I make the transition from being vegetarian to becoming vegan? Is there cheese that is not made from animals? And if there is.. Would that even be healthy? Wouldn't it be just a bunch of chemicals?

Also, I don't want to get bored with being vegan and eat the same foods all the time. What can I include for variety, and how to prepare it. I am not familiar with strange vegetables. Any help would be appreciated. Sorry this is kind of lengthy.

Answer 1

There is A LOT of change in becoming a vegan. I suggest dropping certain foods every month or so (or as you feel comfortable.) Make sure when you drop something, that you have knowledge of foods to add to you menu.... otherwise you will be left feeling you have no food.

Many cheese substitutes still have casein (a milk derivative) and are therefore not really vegan. Tofutti cheese is a soy based cheese. You can also get recipes to make cheese from nutritional yeast (loaded with B12.) Tofutti also has ice cream and other fun stuff. You should be able to find at least a selection of their food in any major grocery store. Many have vegetarian stuff near the vegetables, or they have created their own little *hippie section* as I lovingly call it.

If you are going to use soy to replace cheeses and yogurts, I suggest using rice milk as your milk replacement, for variety.

Some great books are
Vegan with a Vengeance
Vegan Cupcakes Take over the world
order them from http://amazon.com

http://allrecipes.com and http://fatfreevegan.com have some great recipes.

Because you are in a big transition, you may want to have some fake meats in your diet, so you have a sense of things you are used to. Tofu is awesome and you should buy some. If you are feeling lost, make a recipe you are used to and leave out the meat. Sometimes I love a good tofu-spinach spaghetti or some tacos using vegan ground.

Anyway, you wont be a failure or uncaring if you don't hop directly to veganism. When we move in slower transitions, we have the time to be comfortable, confident and knowledgeable enough to go to the next step.

Good Luck

Answer 2

Good for you! You may want to try a cook book called Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone by Deborah Madison. You don't have to find crazy veggies to not get bored. I was vegan for about 3 months and vegetarian for more than a year. (my second wife just makes it impossible.) There is also a web site called Fatfree.com that has a bunch of vegan and vegetarian recipes.

You should be starting to feel better physically too. While I was vegetarian, I ran a marathon, a 134 mile relay race, and got down to about 11% body fat. I was healthier as a vegetarian than any other time of my life. Congratulations on your decision and enjoy the energy.

Answer 3

It's easy to substitute your dairy products with soy products. You can buy soy milk about anywhere, and at Trader Joe's or Whole Foods there are a lot of choices. Even rice milk. To get more accustomed to eating different vegetables, try going to a vegan restaurant and trying something new. That way if you like it, you can buy the vegetable and find an easy recipe online. Also try textured vegetable protein. You can make this into patties, taco meat, ANYTHING. To make it different, add new spices and maybe mix it with vegetables. There's this like, dressing it tastes like soy sauce, its called Liquid Aminos by BRAGG. They sell it at whole foods. Its basically a soy based flavoring and it's really light and gives food a really good flavoring, plus it has all these amino acids that are important for vegans to have.

Good luck!

Answer 4

every cuisine has vegan/vegetarian food. what matters is what you like and look for recipies online or get cook books.

Answer 5

Theres all kinds of vegan stuff out on the market, some of it just starts getting pricey. Besides that you could always have free range animals that aren't treated the same way as your mass produced meats, and they are much much better in quality. Vegans can be a pain to hang out with because they are so restricted to what they can eat. Like if you are with freinds, and everyone wants to grab a pizza, nope you can't. Share some buttered popcorn at the movies? Nope. Want to go out to dinner? Then you have to go somewhere with a selection of vegan entrees, etc. Its a pain, believe me.

Answer 6

pumpkin bread
INGREDIENTS

* 3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
* 2 teaspoons baking soda
* 2 teaspoons salt
* 1 teaspoon baking powder
* 1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
* 1 teaspoon ground allspice
* 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
* 1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
* 3 cups white sugar
* 1 cup canola oil
* 4 eggs, beaten
* 2 cups solid pack pumpkin puree
* 2/3 cup water

DIRECTIONS

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease two loaf pans.
2. In a medium mixing bowl, combine flour, baking soda, salt, baking powder, nutmeg, allspice, cinnamon and cloves.
3. In a large bowl with an electric mixer, blend sugar, oil and eggs. Stir in pumpkin. Slowly blend the flour mixture into pumpkin mixture. While blending the mixture add water incrementally. Pour the batter into two prepared loaf pans.
4. Bake in a preheated 350 degrees F (175 degrees C) oven for 90 minutes. Let cool for 10 minutes before removing from the pans.
pasta
NGREDIENTS

* 1 pound penne pasta
* 2 tablespoons olive oil
* 8 ounces portobello mushrooms, cut into 1/2 inch pieces
* 1 teaspoon dried basil
* 1 teaspoon dried oregano
* 2 cloves garlic, minced
* 1 (28 ounce) jar spaghetti sauce
* 4 cups shredded mozzarella cheese
* 8 ounces Gorgonzola cheese, crumbled

DIRECTIONS

1. Bring a large pot of lightly salted water to a boil. Add pasta and cook for 8 to 10 minutes or until al dente; drain. Pour a glass of ice water over the pasta to stop the cooking, but do not rinse thoroughly.
2. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Coat a 9 x 13 glass pan with olive oil. Heat 2 tablespoons olive oil in large skillet. Add mushrooms. Cook for 2 minutes then add basil, oregano and garlic and cook 1 minute more. Add sauce to mushroom mixture and stir.
3. To assemble, pour enough sauce in the bottom of the pan to cover. Combine the remaining sauce and the pasta. Place one-third of sauced noodles on top of sauce in pan. Top with 1 cup of mozzarella and one-half of the gorgonzola. Repeat for a second layer. Put the final third of the noodles in the pan and top with the final 2 cups of mozzarella.
4. Bake for 30 to 45 minutes, or until cheese is browned. Serve.
no man made cheese sorry
just stick with the original cheese....or i think french cheese is man made let me check that up...
ahhh yes! it is its not from goat trust me..

Answer 7

Try making the transition to a life. You people are silly and make no sense. You act like eating alfalfa sprouts is a religion. Well listen up Hippy, you just killed some sprouts that had a lot of family that loved them. Veg heads are just trying to be trendy and want attention and they take every chance to announce to all that don't care "I'm a veggie vegan animal lover". Ohh, you saved a cow, now we can sleep at night. Hey my grass is getting high, bring some ketchup and get to work.