The L-Plate Vegan

Salads

Yes I know that everyone thinks us vegans eat nothing but salad, but why should we eat anything else when there are so many interesting combinations available?! The easiest way to prepare salad is to go to the supermarket, buy one of their pre-packed salads and pour over your favourite dressing (try Life & Health Salad Cream Style Sunflower Dressing or Marks and Spencer’s French Dressing), but where’s the fun in that?!

Begin with a choice of leaves (spinach leaves make a nice change from lettuce), then go wild! Add nuts, seeds, apple, pears, avocado, grated carrot, celery, mushroom, peppers,  spring or red onion, raw red or white cabbage, watercress, cauliflower, courgettes, bean sprouts, coriander, mint etc. Pour over lashings of your favourite dressing. There’s such a wide choice of oils and vinegars available these days that dressings can be really tasty and very easy to make. Just bear in mind that you need roughly 1 part vinegar to 6 part oil. Clearspring have an amazing range of Organic Oils including Walnut that’s superb mixed with their Organic Apple Balsamic Vinegar. You could always top your salad off with Bacos bacon flavour soya chips (these add a tasty crunch to jacket potatoes and to other main meals too, and can be bought from health food shops and some supermarkets). For a final touch add Tofutti’s Sour Supreme Better Than Sour Cream.

Beans and Lentils

Where would we be without them? Packed with protein, vitamins and minerals, they are cheap and can be used in loads of meals. There’s a huge choice of beans available and they are easiest to use from the tin (although you can buy them dried, but do follow instructions carefully, otherwise some may cause stomach upsets). Choose from kidney, flageolet, borlotti, haricot, cannellini, black-eyed, aduki and butter beans. Lentils are either red, yellow, green or brown, and can be used as a meat substitute in casseroles, soups and stews, or make a dahl (purée) with them. Puy lentils are particularly delicious simmered slowly in some vegetable stock and then used in a stir fry with mushrooms and red peppers. Cook more than you need as they are excellent for adding colour, flavour and texture to rice salads.

Snacks, Munchies and Treats

There are plenty of snack-type foods available, so you don’t need to feel that you miss out on the finer things in life. First, the savouries…

Crisps. Although some of the flavourings in crisps are not vegan there are many that are (some flavourings are ‘fixed’ using a milk sugar called lactose). For a full list, see the Animal Free Shopper, but in the meantime try KP Ready Salted, Worcester Sauce and Salt & Vinegar crisps; Walker’s Beef & Onion and Prawn Cocktail crisps or their Max Chip Shop Flavour; Doritos Dipping Chips; Golden Wonder Bacon or Worcester Sauce Wheat Crunchies; Tesco Potato Triangles.

Particularly delicious are Kettle Chips and a number of the flavours are vegan including Sea Salt with Crushed Black Peppercorns and Sea Salt, Rosemary & Garlic. If in doubt just check the ingredients list on the packet.

Onion bhajis, veggie spring rolls and veggie samosas all make a great snack. Try Somerfield’s, Morrisons’ Waitrose’s or Marks and Spencer’s mini selections, or get them from the chilled cabinet at your local supermarket.

Rice Cakes – you either love or hate these. For some they are a firm favourite when it comes to munching, for others they taste like cardboard! If they’re your cuppa tea, most of the major supermarkets have their own brands, many organic. For a real treat try Clearspring Japanese Rice Cakes in three equally scrumptious flavours; Double Sesame, Teriyaki and Sesame Garlic. Eat them plain or pile on a tasty topping such as Red Pepper Hummus (Marks & Spencer) with Alfalfa sprouts or Waitrose Marinated Field Mushrooms (from the Deli) with Fresh Coriander.

Also try the Kallo range and especially their Thick Sliced Rice Cakes Flavoured with Yeast Extract, good enough to munch on their own.

Fruit ‘n’ Nut case

Dried fruit doesn’t have to mean wrinkly prunes in a bag, well not always… most supermarkets do their own range of tasty snack packets, such as Sainsbury’s, whose range includes red berries, apricot and pineapple. Also try Sundora’s Juicy Mini Fruits – great when you’ve got the munchies. For children, try Humzingers – pure fruit in a bar and available from Tesco and other supermarkets.

Not surprisingly nuts are vegan! They are an underused snack – yet they are healthy (especially walnuts, brazils and almonds), tasty and filling. Eat them as nature intended, or try ready salted mixed nuts, bombay mix or Hawaiian mixes (but watch out for honey – this means avoiding honey-roasted nuts too!)

Seeds – also one of the healthiest vegan nibbles. Pumpkin seeds (packed with zinc needed for a good sex drive!), sesame seeds (calcium rich) and sunflower seeds are excellent snacks – keep them on your desk at work and dip in.

Crumpets.  Most supermarkets sell crumpets which are vegan, just remember to check the label. Waitrose 6 Organic Toaster Crumpets are particularly tasty.

Bagels. The New York Bagel Company make four flavours – plain, onion, poppy and cinnamon & raisin, all of which are vegan, and are available from supermarkets. You’ll also find the bagels at Marks & Spencer and Waitrose particularly good.

And for the sweet…

Chocolate. At the risk of stating the obvious, milk chocolate contains milk – but don’t panic! It’s easy to get hold of vegan chocolate from your health food shop. Try Plamil’s hazelnut bar or their organic mint bar – very tasty! However, it’s equally important to be aware of what to buy when you just fancy some chocolate and there’s no health food shop around. Bendicks Chocolate Ginger, Marks & Spencer Swiss Dark Chocolate, Co-op After Dinner Mints and good old After Eight Mints (only the dark chocolate version) are all vegan. But the Viva! Award for Fab Choc goes to Waitrose – their own chocolate bars are vegan and very very scrumptious. Choose Woodland Fruit, Cognac or Orange. Lindt’s Excellence 70% bar is wonderfully rich dark choc. And for a non-milk milk chocolate, we highly recommend Tesco’s Free From Chocolate Bar. Also worth a taster are the vegan options from the Green and Black’s range and in particular their Maya Gold Organic and Cherry flavours (available from most supermarkets as well as health shops). For those ‘spoil yourself’ days, try Viva!’s selection of delights or treat a friend to a box of our handmade chocolates, pecan parfaits, gourmet truffles, or cremes (call Viva! for a free Gifts for Life catalogue on 0117 944 1000 Mon-Fri; or order online at www.viva.org.uk).

Biscuits. There are loads of biscuits easily available. For a more complete list, see the The Animal Free Shopper (see, we said it was an essential guide!), but here’s some to be going on with:

Asda: Bourbon Creams; Ginger Nuts; Rich Tea Fingers

Co-op: Fruit Country Crunch; Coconut Rings; Lemon Puff Creams

Tesco: Ginger Nuts; Fruit Shortcakes; Rough Oatcakes

Waitrose: Coconut Crumble Creams; Fruit Shrewsbury Biscuits

Marks & Spencer: Oat Crunchies; Ginger Snaps; High Fibre Digestives

Somerfield: Coconut Rings; Fruit Shortcake; Ginger Crunch

Doves Farm Biscuits come heavily recommended. You can find them in most health food shops and many of the larger supermarkets including Waitrose. Most of their range is vegan such as the Plain Chocolate Digestives, Chocolate Chip Cookies, Lemon Zest Cookies, Chocolate Swirls and best of all, Ginger Jazz.

Flapjacks. Easy enough to make, but even easier to buy, vegan flapjacks are readily available. Chunky Jack make a Coffee & Walnut one that’s vegan, and R J Foods have made it easy for us by stating on the label which of theirs are suitable for vegans (these include Cherry & Coconut, Rum & Raisin and Raspberry). Doves Farm make a delicious Organic Apple & Sultana Flapjack and equally as yummy are their Easy Organic Cereal bars (not exactly a flapjack but a chewy fruity cornflake cake) sold in boxes of five. Euroviva’s Rebar bar can be found in health food shops and Waitrose, and contains eight servings of organic fruit and veg! Also try the new sugar-free Leda Choc-Orange flavour Lite Bar; scrumptiously chocolatey AND healthy, and available in health food shops, Woolworths and Safeway.

Desserts

Traditional desserts, cakes and biscuits can usually be made using vegan ingredients, but if you’re more interested in buying them than making them, there are plenty of choices available:

The Organic Pudding Company Sticky Toffee Pudding or their Tangy Lemon (from health shops and by mailorder at www.wildpuddings.com or call 01747 820719)

Asda’s Apple Strudels (freezer section); Rhubarb Pie (Bakery) or Family Malt Loaf

Baker’s Delight Bramley Apple Pies and Cherry Bakewell Tarts (available in Asda) – not Mr Kipling’s but still exceedingly good!

Mr Kipling’s Glazed Mince Tartlets and Apple & Blackcurrant or Apricot Pies

Co-op Apple & Summer Fruit Strudels (freezer section)

Marks and Spencer Summerfruits Cômpote

Waitrose Summer Pudding

Zedz Foods American Style Muffins including Cherry & Coconut, Coffee & Walnut and Chocolate (from health shops and by mailorder – view their full range at www.zedzfoods.co.uk then email your order to info@zedzfoods.co.uk or call 01691 648029 Mon-Fri)

Sunnyvale’s delicious range of cakes such as Cherry, Fig & Orange and Chocolate Chip (all with no added sugar, from health food shops)

Soreen Lincolnshire Plum Loaf; Apple & Cinnamon and Orange & Sultana fruit loaves (from all supermarkets)

Iceland Treacle Tarts

Top them off with some Provamel Custard, in Vanilla and Chocolate flavours (from health shops and most supermarkets including Tesco, Morrisons and Sainsbury’s). Or whip up some traditional custard using Bird’s Custard Powder and heated soya milk.

If doughnuts are your thing then you’ll be pleased to know that several of the supermarkets own brands are suitable – Marks & Spencer, Tesco and Co-op. If you’re a fan of jelly (often made from gelatine, obtained from boiling down animal tissues), Just Wholefoods make vegetarian jelly crystals in lemon, raspberry, strawberry and tropical fruit flavours which are all vegan (from health shops). Rowntrees also make little tubs of ready to eat jelly (not refrigerated) and these are vegan too (from most supermarkets – usually near the tinned puddings section).

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