Stop, in the name of good taste.

Amazing vegan burger in Kampot, Cambodia

I love food. Love it. Food is great. And I don't take food for granted. I would never do anything to jeopardise our relationship.

I became a vegetarian at thirteen because my house went vegetarian.

It wasn't a big deal, because I wasn't really into meat. I mean, I didn't love taking a THERMOS OF DAHL to school while all the other kids were eating sandwiches, but that is a story for another time. In my late teens I realised that vegetarians were derided and considered difficult to feed. So I started eating seafood, the least offensive (IMO) of the edible flesh.

Fast-forward to 2013, almost twenty years after I stopped eating almost all the meats. My partner in crime (who will henceforth be referred to as 'Himself') decided that his time with me had involved too much butter, too much cheese, and too much saturated fat.

So began the conversion of our house to animal-free. (Mostly. I mean, we couldn't get rid of the dog.)

Look at that face.

I was concerned, obviously. As I mentioned above, I love food, and while I could do kick-arse vegetarian food a lot of my recipes featured butter. Blue cheese. Boconccini. And there was the other concern as well. I've already copped a lot of shit in my life for being vegetarian. And I'd always mocked vegans. Was I putting myself in a category that meant I would never be safe from derision again?

We didn't go vegan straight away. I had to check that I could do it, investigation was required. I have some amazing friends who would email me internet recipes to assist my research, and got some cookbooks, started reading.

And I discovered some stuff.



1) People confuse a vegan diet with a gluten free diet.
 NOT THE SAME THING, FOLKS! Hey recipe books, you know what I do when you make all your vegan stuff with spelt? I USE REAL FLOUR AND IT TASTES AMAZING. I understand some people have issues with gluten, and I feel for you, guys. But just because it's vegan, doesn't mean it has to be gluten free. DON'T PUNISH BAGELS FOR YOUR IGNORANCE.

2) People confuse a vegan diet with a raw food diet.
I love cooking. And raw is fantastic, I LOVE preparing raw in summer. The cashew cheesecake below is raw, and man, it tastes like some kind of guilt-free joyfulness because it's just SOOO healthy and unprocessed. But, and there's a huge but, IT'S STILL OKAY TO COOK UP A BIG BOWL OF PASTA. If I thought that I had to replace all my pasta with thin strips of julienned zucchini you wouldn't see me for dust because I'd be running towards the carbs. Oh and I have a recipe for THE MOST AMAZING VEGAN DONUTS. That's right, you heard. But you can't make those little suckers out of zucchini I'll tell you that much.

Banana, peanut butter and chocolate raw vegan cheesecake. I call it the guilt free Elvis and it's like something indescribable.

3) People confuse a vegan diet with a no-processed-foods diet.
And I'll be honest, processed foods aren't GREAT. We all know that. I KNOW that I shouldn't eat white flour and white pasta and white bread, that I should buy less refined sweeteners and that sugar is the devil and that just because it's vegan doesn't mean it hasn't had the SHIT processed out of it (hello Tofutti cream cheese substitute, you cheeky devil you!)

And when I have time, I DO make my own soy milk or nut milk, I make my own tofu, I use maple syrup instead of white sugar and make my own vegan cheese and make my own bread using the best quality I can find. But you know what? That's my choice, and when I first started this vegan thing I didn't do any of that stuff. And you don't have to. Just read the ingredients on the packets of packet stuff you want to buy, for goodness sake!

4) People confuse a vegan diet with... an actual diet.
"So, Bridget, you've been a vegan now basically for eight months, how much weight have you lost?"

"Well, a little bit, but that was mainly from when I got sick in Cambodia."

"What? None? How are you subsisting on a diet of lettuce leaves (what vegans definitely eat) and not loosing a single kilo?"

"Oh, well actually because I EAT AMAZING FOOD ALL THE TIME AND DON'T COUNT CALORIES."

That conversation aside, being a vegan doesn't mean staring sadly at a piece of tomato with some vegan cottage cheese on it (I have no proof vegan cottage cheese exists, and I don't know who would create something so disgusting. It's merely a flight of fancy.) We eat really well and it is my aim to combat some of the preconceived notions about veganism and what it entails.

I love it when meat-eaters and vegetarians alike say to me, "Wow, that definitely doesn't taste vegan!" But I also HATE it, because it DOES taste vegan, because VEGAN FOOD CAN TASTE DELICIOUS!

And I'm going to prove it, in recipe form.