Post Punk Kitchen Forum

I had been vegetarian for years, but didn't really cook. I ordered Vegan with a Vengeance to start learning how to cook and to check "this whole vegan thing" out. I was having people over and I made the tofu spanakopita. They were SO good and everyone loved them! That definitely made me feel like being vegan was doable.

ha, no, it was turning 18 and moving out of my parents' house. They were remarkably cool about me being a vegetarian but could not cope with me being vegan. This was back in the 90s and my big struggle was giving up soft serve - some rather lackluster choco-banana-walnut soft serve is the last non-vegan food I ate - but there was no decent replacement for it back then. The fact that peanut chews are vegan helped a lot (my dad and I both love them straight out of the freezer).

There wasn't really one recipe for me. I had tried going vegan a few years earlier and failed miserably, mainly because I was trying to do it alone without any other vegans who were regularly in my life for support, and whilst I was living with people who weren't even vegetarian, let alone vegan. Then, when I was living on my own, I realised I had a number of vegans around me and would go to visit them for dinner and have them over to mine, and quickly realised how many easy and delicious vegan recipes there are out there! It might sound silly, but I had envisioned a life of eating only a very basic and limited range of meals once going vegan. When I saw the reality, all my excuses faded away and I've never looked back.
That said, I did get very overexcited upon learning that (in the UK at least) JusRol puff pastry is vegan (it even says so on the packet)! I love puff pastry. Also, going out to an Italian restaurant and having a delicious cheese-free pizza gave me loads of confidence that life could go on after dairy. And vegan home-made cakes. I could go on for ages; it's been such a happy journey :)

will definitely make time to read all previous posts thoroughly but i wanted to specifically mention two recipes: the vietnamese tofu wraps from QFV and isa's tofu ricotta cheese which was very yummy ontop of pizza and my omni hubby agreed.

before making the vegan committment, i checked a bunch of cookbooks out from the library and started buying ones i loved. it was so exciting to try new dishes and the flavors were so amazing, some exotic some familiar, and it was how good everything tasted that made me realize i can make the committment to being vegan. i didn't really see it as giving anything up since i was gaining so much like fun flavors and kitchen experience and lots of new dishes. prior to me going vegan, mu hubby did most of the cooking, and he is/was a great cook. now though, since last spring/early summer, i've 100% been doing all the menu planning, cooking, etc... and of course hubby helps too. i know this might not be a very feminist thing to say, but i kinda like that i'm "in charge" of the kitchen and meal planning, cooking and such. if i wasn't vegan, i wouldn't be as involved with our food decisions.

This is boring as can be but when I first tasted basic green lentils cooked on the stove in with a little vinegar added into the water, I absolutely loved it and pretty ate it everyday for about a year with starch and veggies. I didn't even call myself a veg until I realized I hadn't really had any meat all for a year because I loved lentils so much. I went full vegan shortly after, knowing that I would be fine with just lentils if I had to rely on them only....of course I then discovered PPK and my vegan palette expanded exponentially.

Definitely baked goods for me. Dessert is a shamefully big priority in my life and I thought baking genuinely delicious things was impossible without eggs. After making a few different cookies and cakes I realized, "this is better than the non-vegan version!"

Also: the cashew ricotta from Veganomicon.

Not a recipe. But copious amounts of avocado, hummus, and some vegenaise got me through the cheese cravings by providing enough delicious creamy fat in my sandwiches and other meals.

Fronch Toast, specifically. VWAV in general. It was a whole new world.

I made polenta with saucy black beans and tomatoes from the student's vegetarian cookbook and realized it was super easy and so good I ate almost the entire thing. I just made it again recently and it's still forking awesome.

Nick says his turning point was a vegan brownie at a feminist conference. The previous attempt at a vegan brownie had turned out hilariously bad and now lives on in black mail photos of friends in various scenarios with extremely turd-looking brownies.

Ohhh my god that carrot cake ice cream is BOMB. Probably like my favorite treat of all time. I'm on the east coast and I've seen it in Wegmans pretty regularly.

Anyway, I started making a crapload of tofu scrambles when I first became vegan. I was eating eggs a lot previously. I rarely even buy tofu now but I make all kinds of other scramble-y dishes!

Italian Feast Sausages. That and daiya. Once I realized that I could make a decent vegan baked ziti, I was hooked.

This for me too, pretty much. I had been vegan for a few months and really missed Asiago cheese on pizza, spaghetti, etc. Then I saw a recipe from Jo Stepaniak for Nut Sprinkles - ground nuts, nooch and seasonings. Fourteen years later this is still the best vegan cheese I eat!

Cashew tofu ricotta. The last cheesy thing I kept eating was a dish of cheese ravioli at my favorite Italian place. I made a lasagna with vegan ricotta and realized that I wouldn't miss it!

I have got to go there. Maybe I'll take myself for my birthday next month. I never did treat myself to a birthday dinner last year.

I used to love Stouffers Mac and cheese with Morningstar Farms bacon crumbled in. I need a vegan replacement for that.

This video shows the recipe for the Soul Vegetarian mac: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhulOmHr3Kc
Looks really easy to make!

Awww! That made me happy.

There were several, all of which I still love: V'con black bean burgers, DEOTS wings and tofu eggless salad (from a Toni Fiore show).

I gave up meat over 20 years ago, but I still loved the richness of cheesy dishes.

The 2 things that convinced me that I can maintain this were both in Vcon, Mac Daddy and the cashew ricotta. Those fill every craving I have.

I'm pretty sure this was mine, too. I mean, if chocolate chip cookies were just as good, anything was possible.

The entire Mediterranean Vegan Kitchen cookbook, my first vegan book along with VWAV. I figured hey, if so many people ALREADY EAT THIS WAY it can't be rocket science. And then pizza without cheese tasted so dang good there was no looking back.

Vegan cheesecake, made by a roomate in college who just so happened to be vegan as well and roomed with me, made me be happy as a vegan, since I missed cheesecake and couldn't make a decent one myself at first. but the reason I stayed vegan at 18 and failed between age 15 and then in my attempts, though I was already vegetarian for years by then, was my parents. They always used to catch on to me not eating cheese and things they were offering me and start pitching a fit, which was annoying and usually ended up with me eating that stuff a few times a year when I lived with them. Been easy to be vegan since then.