The early days: what foods got you by?

is A-1 veg? I never looked.

 

I gotta say beans, mostly kidney, but I have always prefered beans over beef in mexican type food.
It was a lifesaver finding a vegan worcestershire sauce.
Also lentils, once I found that they mostly take the flavour of whatever you cook them with, they have become my ground beef replacement in a lot of dishes.

 

When I turned vegetarian 11 years ago, I didn't really eat much differently. I just didn't eat the meat my parents cooked. I really enjoyed three cheese tortillini with my mum's homemade pesto and garden salad. I liked it so much that I think thats all I ate for dinner for a couple years.

During my vegetarian to vegan transition I used agave nectar in place of honey, but I still miss honey.

 

lol that's awesome
i did steak sauce on rice because i too missed the taste of the sauce the most.

 

Hmm well I don't know if it was any sort of like, sauce for me... but carbs in general helped me, because it helped keep me full and satisfied.

I ate a lot of pasta, and toast, etc.

I actually was NOT a fan of veggies before going vegetarian, I didn't like the taste of hardly any vegetables except for universal veggies like carrots and potatoes and the like... So I would try a new veggie everyday and if I hated it, I would keep making myself eat it, so I would acquire a taste for it. That's where sauces came in for me... if I was trying to get used to eating like, broccoli, then I would smother it in ketchup or A-1 or barbecue sauce. Then, eventually, I would use less and less, or I would just lightly salt it, until finally I got to enjoy broccoli on its own or raw.

My biggest problem with going veg wasn't missing meat... I never really missed meat, rather my challenge was balancing my diet and getting healthy, and getting used to healthy foods.

Before I went vegan I was obsessed with junk like mac 'n cheese, french fries, etc.

Well, now that I've been vegan long enough and know my options, unfortunately now I know that all of those things are available to me in vegan versions and it sucks because now I eat a lot of junk again. So, I'm thinking about making a transition to raw vegan.

But that's off topic lol...

Ketchup honestly was probably my lifesaver. I hated fake meat and everything in the beginning but smother it with ketchup and I was good to go.

 

for a while when i first became a vegetarian, i ate bean burritos all the time. they are so good. i ate a lot of pasta too.

now i eat veggie stir-fry about three times a week. mmmmmm...

 

Yeah, last year i ate a lot of cheese when i tried to become vegetarian. It didnt really work though cause i guess i wasnt really prepared for the transition. I'm going to try again this summer and ive been reading a lot more about it. Hopefully i'll do better. Any advice you dudes can give out?

 

id say that potatoes helped me along a lot. they can be made in many different styles, shapes, and tastes, when prepared in different dishes. filling, nutritious, and delicious.

 

that was the main food i ate when becoming a vegetarian, i ate it so much that i got sick of it. literally

 

taco meat seasoning on tofu....i seriously lived on this at first because i missed the taste of spicy ground beef and needed the protein from the tofu....

 

I decided to turn veg when i was five and figured out where meat came from,, my dad yelled at me and said if i wasnt gonna eat meat then i could feed myself,, so I ate a whole lot of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and canned veggies,, even my school was completely against me,, they served me pb and js for four years every day, HA they didnt break me though,, Im 23 now and still goin strong,,

 

a lot of stir fry's. i bought a vegetarian recipe book which helped a lot

 

When I turned Vegetarian... I ate a lot of cheese to get me by, but then a week later... I turned Vegan.. and out goes the cheese, but I ate a lot of baked potatos...

 

morningstar fake bacon is fun too....had a fake bacon BLT the other night, which was pretty good aside from my slight aversion to the concept of fake meat....

 

morningstar is the best when it comes to meat alternatives.

 

I've been cooking a lot of soup lately (still transitioning). Soup has always filled me up and there are approximately 8 billion soup recipes so I'll have plenty of options to help me through. I would like to start cooking stir-frys and all that but I just started cooking on a so-so basis last fall and now I'm getting heavy into it this summer so I get stressed out cooking way different styles everyday...

brad

Oh I almost forgot to mention, I think soup is a great transition food (at least for me) because I hardly notice meat in soups that have meat in them, so vegetarian soup hardly seems different.