Vegan for 1 Week

I’ve added on my 40 before 40 bucket list: Vegan for 1 week. It might be a bit strange, as I’m been vegetarian for more than 10 years. Also, my diet involves eating quite a lot of vegan food. But, I wanted to see how it would be. I made a meal plan and I stuck to it for most days.

I had to postpone the starting of the vegan week as I went to a conference and I wasn’t sure they would have vegan options. Also, I wanted to take pictures of everything I was eating and cook at home. I managed to take pictures all days except a dinner a few days ago. After having cocktails at Aloha Bar, I’ve had some huomous and pitta, but didn’t take any pictures. It was a less than usual day. Anyway, it doesn’t make a difference and I managed to have something vegan.

Another day we went to Costa and my husband ordered a vegan latte. He had only vegan food too, although he did have a few more options when we were out. At Costa, they have two options, soy milk and coconut milk. It’s really great to have these options. I had my usual black coffee, but the coconut milk latte was really nice too.

Vegan for 1 week – Day 1: Sandwich-pizza and a Pina Colada smoothie (pineapple and coconut milk). For lunch I made Tofu steak in Guinness, oven baked chips, Guinness sauce, followed by a pistachio and dark chocolate spread crispbread for me, and a homemade jam crispbread for my husband. For dinner, we had carrot and coriander soup with garlic bread. Followed by almond milk cocoas, they are delicious. I had it twice in a week, so that says how much I liked it.

Vegan for 1 week – Day 2: Overnight oats with matcha, carob syrup, almond milk, topped with cocoa nibs, almond flakes, pistachio butter and a green smoothie. For lunch we’ve had homemade humous, olives, and served with homemade pitta. I made a few pittas, and we’ve had them for the next three days. Making in bulk saves time. For dinner we had two bowls of carrot and coriander soup each. It’s one of my favourite soups. A couple of hours after dinner I was hungry, so I made a salad with 2 tomatoes, corn, almond flakes, rapeseed oil, salt, mace, oregano, turmeric. It was delicious.

Vegan for 1 week – Day 3: Pitta-pizza for breakfast, with grilled courgette, mushrooms, capers. And grapes as a dessert. For lunch we’ve had baked beans with salad, Cauldron sausages, and homemade pitta. A smoothie as a snack. For dinner we had mushroom salad with cauliflower mayo and crispbreads.

Vegan for 1 week – Day 4: Pitta-pizza for breakfast, with a smoothie. On the pizza I’ve put sauce, Cauldron sausage leftover from the day before, capers, and grilled courgette (leftover from the previous day). For lunch we’ve had some oven baked chips with two bean burgers made by my husband. I think he makes the best vegan bean burgers, with cauliflower mayo, slices of tomatoes, and tomato sauce. Soup for dinner and a cup of almond milk cocoa. I’m impressed with the taste of almond milk. I’ll have my cocoas with almond milk from now on. It gives a lovely flavour.

Vegan for 1 week – Day 5: Overnight oats with almond milk and a smoothie. I can’t remember what I’ve added in the smoothies, each day was different and I didn’t write it down. For lunch we had risotto with coconut milk, flavoured with cardamon,  mushrooms, and grilled courgettes, served with garlic bread. I love the combination of coconut milk and cardamon, it’s my favourite type of vegan risotto, and, in general of risotto. We planned to have soup for dinner, and we had a homemade lentil soup. But, we were still hungry, hence some potatoes, a couple of Linda McCartney vegan sausages, and Guinness.

Vegan for 1 week – Day 6: Pancakes with orange juice and a smoothie. A couple of Nakd bars for me and Hike for my husband, before leaving with errands. The lunch was quite late, pasta al olio, followed by grapes. I mentioned before that we’ve had cocktails and humous too.

The vegan pancakes were great and I’ve shared the recipe for them, on my food blog. Using orange juice made them fluffy. I will use orange juice in baking too, I’m sure it is a good substitute for milk in this kind of recipes.

Pasta al olio is something we have a few times a year. A friend (meat-eating friend) loved it and he was ordering this when we were going to dinner at Italian restaurants with him. So, we’ve tried it, and we loved it too. Besides flavoured oil, the pasta dish had a few mushrooms and sundried tomatoes.

I’ve decided to buy a lot of mushrooms, wash and chop them, then shallow fry them. When they were cooked, I let them cool and put them in a bag in the freezer. When I want to add some mushrooms, I take as much as I need and defrost them in the microwave in less than a minute. It’s so easy. I will do this with other veggies too.

Vegan for 1 week – Day 7: Porridge and smoothie  in the morning. I had some jam on my porridge. A snack of pitta-pizza, followed by a pizza and a vegan beer, and some chocolate. Not what was on my meal plan, but we’ve celebrated a good news, hence that we had pizza after pizza. I didn’t buy any vegan cheese and, for me, the pizza was very good without cheese. My husband prefers cheese on pizza, so we’ll go back to vegetarian pizza.

Vegan for 1 week – my thoughts

I didn’t find it hard at all to be vegan, but it made me discover that some things you might think are vegan are not. I enjoyed this week and the challenge. I will continue eating as I am now, but I imagine my dairy and egg intake will be smaller. I didn’t miss cheese this week, not other types of dairy. My husband though stopped drinking tea because he didn’t find a suitable replacement for milk. He had green tea and other types of tea that you would not have with milk. I agree with him, the nut milk has a flavour and, in tea, you can taste it. It’s great for cocoas though. For me, that was not an issue, as I only have black coffee.

Have you ever tried to be vegan for 1 week or maybe more? Is it something you’d like to do?