Vegan: A good cook never boils carrots and pees in the same pot! ;-)

On the final day of my ‘week in the life of a vegan,’ it struck me that I hadn’t done any real cooking. Beans on toast, jacket potatoes and cereal with soya milk are hardly works of a culinary genius. Although this is typically how I live as a student, I felt I was doing an injustice to the vegan diet if I didn’t make at least one proper meal.

I had a whole load of potatoes that needed using up, (despite living off them for most of the week) so decided on a traditional shepherd’s pie.

I set about making the recipe vegan suitable, replacing the ground beef with a meat free mince, the butter with a soya substitute and the beef broth with some sage and onion stuffing mix as I couldn’t find any vegan suitable stock cubes, and thought the mix sounded like it might taste good. (They say improvisation is the mark of a true chef!) I checked online that I could get all the substitues before heading out shopping, I didn’t fancy hot-footing it between various supermarkets.

Whilst browsing the isles I decided cooking for one was really going to be more effort than it was worth, so rather than abandoning the whole culinary escapade I decided to invite a friend round to enjoy (or not, as the case may be!) the meal with me.

Although there was to be no £1000 prize I immediately jumped into ‘Come Dine with Me’ mode and decided to play the ultimate host. One course was simply not going to be enough. Taking inspiration from the canned soup isle I decided to get some carrot and coriander. I figured all I’d have to do was wizz that up in a smoothie maker with a bit of seasoning and I'd have a starter.

As for dessert, could I make a rice pudding with soya milk? I guess we’d find out!

Once home, I found incredibly simple recipes for both a soup and rice pudding.

The only changes I made were spicing the pudding up with a bit of cinnamon and nutmeg and adding dried apricots and raisins- I know how boring it would be made with just soya milk!

For extra vegan points I also added soya milk into my mash for the pie (Although that was mainly to use it up, as after this week I will NOT be putting that rubbish on my Weetabix!)

Although I may seem like a bit of a kitchen novice I’m actually more of a case of ‘can cook, can’t be a***d’ and so once I got started the cooking was a doddle.

Organised kitchen chaos: lovely vegan suitable ingredients

I deliberately didn’t tell my friend Jess that the meal would be meat and dairy free, to see if she questioned the flavours of any of the dishes. It wasn’t until she’d polished off all three courses that I brought up the topic of my blog. Her reaction was one of complete surprise- “I did think your pie was lacking a little something, but I never suspected that something was meat!”

To conclude, using vegan substitutes may make food a little blander than the original dish, but not so much so that you can’t enjoy a wholesome, varied meal with a wide range of flavours- hats off to the chef I’d say!