Top products from r/veg

My wife went vegan first, I followed slowly behind her about a year ago. She went over primarily due to ethical concerns, I followed for every reason, probably mostly due to the environmental and health benifits. My lipid panel looks much better and my blood pressure dropped more than 20 points (from 140/90 to under 120/75). My protein and B12 levels are fine as I take a daily multivitamin. Being 30, I figured if I was gonna get serious about living healthy now that the easy years have passed, I better get cracking. My doctor is more than pleased.

If you want a lot of calories, eat nuts! Nuts are very energy dense. We eat a 1/4 cup every day with lunch, high in healthy fats and protein. Incidentally, an excellent snack for on-the-go ;)

One thing I found I really like a lot are chickpeas (garbanzo beans). I never knew I liked them, never really ate them, but now I can't get enough. I really like them on whole on salads and mashed into a "chicken salad" style used on sandwiches. A little vegan mayo and some vegan bacon salt...delicious!!! They are also pretty high in protein.

We probably spend the same amount on groceries as we used to (about $80 a week, pretty high for a married couple with no kids). The main expense is organic vegetables, I'd say.

One thing we do splurge on are Clif Bars for lunch. A Clif Bar, 1/4 cup of home made trail mix, and an apple is what we eat at work 5 days a week. Expensive, but very fast, easy and reasonably healthy. The Clif Bars that we eat have about 10g of protein each. Also makes a great easy snack: it's basically the meal we'll we eat for lunch and breaks when we go backpacking. Except we'll occasionally throw some 20g protein bars in as well.

I keep going back to protein because we both exercise fairly intensely six days a week: http://www.amazon.com/Jillian-Michaels-30-Day-Shred/dp/B00127RAJY (I'm just getting into level 3, she's been at level 3 for a month now). I didn't worry about my protein intake before starting, and it never seemed to cause a problem. From what I had read, for my body weight I was getting 10 to 20g less than optimal, but that optimal had a bit of safety built into it. When starting the exercise routine, I found I was incredibly sore, day after day after day...especially my calves. I then did some reading and figured perhaps my body wasn't able to repair my muscles properly. I kept track and increased my intake to 70 to 80g a day, and the pain mostly went away. Now, as I've been stepping up through the levels, I'll only be sore with a new group of muscles for a day, tops.

Being a vegetarian, learning to cook for yourself is going to be important.

I recommend the book Becoming Vegetarian, it has plenty of good starter recipes.

Tofu's easy to cook: it's bland by itself but picks up flavor easily. Fry it in a little oil then add some soysauce and keep heating til browned, it's very tasty.

Some simple & cheap meals I like:

Veggie stir fry with brown rice or noodles.

Brown rice is a staple, very cheap & healthy. Put it on and it's done in about an hour. White rice is faster of course, but lacks some of the vitamins. Grab a bunch of veggies you like, I typically like: broccoli, onions, bell peppers, a little garlic, carrots, mushrooms, celery. Cut everything into strips or bite-sized pieces, fry in wok or pan for about 10 minutes, add a little sauce (soysauce, blackbean sauce, sweet hot sauce), then serve on top of rice.

When I'm feeling lazy I'll make something similar, which takes longer but requires less watching:

Baked veggies

Chop up all the veggies you like, plus some potatoes if you want. Coat a baking pan in oil, put them in the oven at 350 for 60-90 minutes. Turn the veggies every 20 minutes or so. Add basil about 5 minutes before done. Serve on top of rice with some sauce.

Miso Soup

Miso is a little pricy, but goes a long way.

Boil 2 cups of water, lower to simmer, stir in 2 tablespoons of miso. Add wheat noodles, chopped mushrooms, small cubes of tofu, cook for about 5 minutes. Add chopped green onion (scallions) just before serving.

Vegetable Soup

This is easy. Get some vegetable soup stock bouillon cubes, then just chop your veggies, add to boiling water with the bouillon, serve with some bread & margarine. Some beans are good in this too.

Seitan is definitely something to explore. I like it instead of tofu in my stirfries sometimes, and it's great in:

Veggie Fajitas

Cut some seitan, bell peppers, carrots into strips, slice some mushrooms. Fry them up. Serve in whole wheat fajita bread with salsa.

I am not strictly vegetarian but we cook mostly veg in our house. I take cooking very seriously, and typically do not use cookbooks. When I do I am the kind of person who reads a recipe and then puts the book away and cooks.

This book is different though, it is written by Rich Landau the owner of a vegetarian place in Philadelphia called Horizons. It started out as a lunch counter in a natural food store and grew into one of philadelphia's signature eateries. I was lucky enough to take a cooking class with Rich before he struck it big. He has a fantastic technique and passes everything along wonderfully in this book. I have gotten numerous people who shun all things veggie to actually eat and enjoy grilled tofu and seitan prepared Rich's way. Enjoy

I use a slightly modified version of the recipe from Professional Vegetarian Cooking.

dry:
2 c vital wheat gluten; 1/2 c white flour

wet:
2 T tamari; 3/4 c vegetable juice cocktail (I never have this, so I squirt about 1 to 1 1/2 T of ketchup in the bottom of a liquid measuring cup, fill to the 3/4 c line with water, and whisk it up); 1/2 c water; 4 drops liquid smoke

Mix the dry stuff separately, mix the wet stuff separately, then mix everything in a bowl. Knead until it's a homogeneous blob, then let rest for 15 minutes. Sculpt it into a log, and slice into "steaks" or strips with a serrated knife. Bring a large pot of stock to a boil, add the seitan, and let it come to a boil again. Simmer at a medium-low temperature for about an hour. Now cook it like it's meat! I think that this is a pretty good recipe, although keep in mind seitan generally won't have much taste anyway until you season it AFTER all of the boiling is done. One of my favorite ways to cook it is to pan-sear it in strips with extra virgin olive oil, tamari, and umeboshi vinegar (cook until all of the liquid from the tamari and ume is gone).

I don't bother with premade stock because if you cook with fresh ingredients enough, you will have everything you need to make it at home. Just save carrot tops/peels, celery tops, onion peels, garlic peels, parsley stems, mushroom stems, bell pepper innards, etc until you have enough to fill a pasta cooking sized pot about 1/3 to 1/2 full. Jack up the flavor by adding a couple garlic cloves and a sliced onion. Once I reused ginger that had been used to make ginger beer; stock making is pretty forgiving. Fill it to about 3/4 full with water, bring it to a boil, and let it simmer for about 45 minutes. Strain it well and compost the solids.

If you want a book that's both entertaining and informative I would recommend Skinny Bastard. Also see Skinny Bastard About. It will help you with diet and lifestyle along with supporting your choice to go vegetarian. I'd let you borrow mine if I could. Best of luck!

Upvote for the Veganomicon recommendation. It was the first veggie cook book I ever bought and it is absolutely wonderful for beginners and experienced cooks alike. The first few chapters are dedicated to instructions on how to prepare just about every kind of grain, legume and vegetable you'll commonly come across. The recipes in the book are also delicious and for the most part quick and simple to prepare. Definitely give this one a try.

I got my girlfriend Fresh from the Vegetarian Slow Cooker for her birthday, and it's been pretty excellent. We made ratatouille yesterday, and it was really tasty.

If you don't already have a crock pot, get one. It's so easy to just toss a bunch of stuff into it in the morning, and come back in the evening to a hot, delicious dinner.

Soy yogurt is delicious, but my favorite milk is Rice : ) http://www.amazon.com/Vegan-Planet-Irresistible-Recipes-Fantastic/dp/1558322116
This is the book I have, there are a lot of article in it also. And grow your own produce! I have always found that home grown food is better that anything, especially those jalepenos.

I mean, the article is a little misleading. They metion all these "non-vegan" things, without mentioning that there are plenty of vegan versions of these things. Except for the money thing. That sucks. I guess if you're super hard core you could only use cards? But that doesn't really fall under the "as far as possible and practicable" definition of veganism. :P

But for condoms there are Gylde and Sustain that are vegan, cruelty-free, and Fair Trade. There's Sir Richard's that are vegan and cruelty-free. And there's Skyn and Durex Avanti that are vegan (but not cruelty-free). And I'm sure there are other brands as well, if you do a quick Google search. :)

my apologies,

did you know you can make milk by blending cantaloupe

Hemp Milk is healthy and Oat Milk for homemade Ice cream, im going to make soon

coconut milk and coconut oil are yummy

avacado is good to spread on toast

im thinking of trying this

http://www.amazon.com/Roads-End-Organics®-Mozzarella-Chreese®/dp/B0017SRACU/ref=sr_1_113?ie=UTF8&s=grocery&qid=1269916785&sr=1-113, Subscribe and Save

Nutritional Yeast is the base and is used in alot of fake cheese recipes

Peta wrote a cookbook of only recipes which can be made in the microwave: <http://www.amazon.com/PETAs-Vegan-College-Cookbook-Delicious/dp/1402218850/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1266097407&sr=8-1>

Also, if you have access to a fridge, keep fake lunchmeat and bread around; pretty easy to make a sandwich.

Rice cookers are the greatest invention ever; rice is retardedly cheap and a rice cooker means you need no skill whatsoever to cook it; many come with a steamer on top so you can steam vegetables at the same time as cooking the rice. At my university you're allowed to keep them in the dorm.

This is a fantastic, well researched book on the subject: http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1455116742

It was enough to convince me to avoid cereal grains as much as possible ( "whole grains" are still poison)

My transition into veganism was probably initially generated by a general reevaluation of the habits I'd developed and inherited as a kid growing up. My parents never second-guessed the morality of buying and eating meat, and I didn't either. But eventually I moved out of my parents' home and then in a rather haphazard, lazy normal kind of way set about challenging my beliefs as I matured. One of those beliefs was that buying and eating meat is essentially a non-moral issue.

Reading Jonathan Safran Foer's "Eating Animals" was eye opening for me. I became a rather naive sort of vegan after that for a while. A more recent but very distracting spell of interest in ethics has given me the opportunity to refine my beliefs somewhat.

This book pretty much sums up everything you need to know:
http://www.amazon.com/New-Becoming-Vegetarian-Essential-Healthy/dp/1570671443

Check out a book called Sick & Tired, lots of interesting info and recipes. Helped me get in shape..

I'm not the OP, but I've personally bought it from the store before. I normally buy the Ancient Harvest brand. Click on that link to see it on Amazon (they have lots of different ones -- spaghetti, rotelle, farfalle, etc).

Here's a fairly inexpensive alternative that you can get on-line. You take it with the first bite and it prevents the gas from forming. http://www.amazon.com/Bean-zyme-Anti-Gas-Digestive-Supplement-Shipping/dp/B000CQY9EK/ref=cm_cr_pr_pb_t/179-4308929-6982407

You can try this if you want.

Probably this.

Buy this book: Mark Bittman's "How to Cook Everything Vegetarian" [amazon page]

It alone has nudged my frustration with my girlfriend's vegetarianism up into appreciation levels.