my "excuse" for not making the jump from vegetarian to vegan has always been that i could never give up cheese and timtams (lame excuse but it would be really hard to give them up). i think the cheese excuse is gone now that "cheezly" has come to australia and is available at vegan revolution which is right near our house. its amazing. it comes in edam, mature cheddar, cheddar, gouda and mozzarella flavours and all but the cheddar ones will melt like real cheese (most vegan cheeses don't melt like real cheese). its kind of expensive but the cheese i buy is more expensive than most anyway (its a non-animal rennet cheese that tastes good).
i think my timtam excuse might be out after what happened the other nite. a friend found these imitation timtams (woolworths/safeway brand) in the natural foods section and zac has been buying those the past few weeks. he won't usually share them cuz i have my own real timtams (they're too-good-for-share-cookies). the other nite he popped one in my mouth and i took a bite. i couldn't tell if it was my last timtam (that i was saving for my coffee the next moring) or the imitation one. i tried to figure it out but couldn't (they're a bit smaller than timtams but i couldn't remember which of the 2 were bigger at the time). i had to get zac to take a bite to prove that it wasn't my last timtam (cuz he would never let dairy cross his lips). i think it'll still be a while before i go fully vegan and give up my eggs from c.e.r.e.s. chooks.
the reasons people go vegan keep sounding better and better the more i think about them and melbourne is a very easy city to do it in (tons of vegetarian restaurants that cater for vegans, a few vegan ones and most other places have 1 dish zac can eat-- although he's usually happy with a plate of hot chips). there's also tons of good cookbooks (vegan planet, how it all vegan, the garden of vegan...) that have great, tasty vegan versions of all types of dishes and yes, the pic of the cheesecake above is a vegan chessecake (we had 2 types of amazing vegan cheesecake at a vegan cafe while we were in brisbane-- i think the place was called the forrest cafe(?), its in west end just up the main strip from "the lizard")
I found in my evolution from meat eater to vegetarian to vegan that cheese was the hardest of all to give up. I always loved very matured cheddar. That is a flavour you cannot reproduce.
ReplyDeleteAnyway after a while the craving went away and I now am quite happy without it. The only cheese substitute I use is vegan parmesan on the odd pasta dish but don't really like it.