Starting to cook vegan meals?!
like can most ingredients be found in a regular grocery store? and is there certain kinds of tofu or soy products that are better then the rest.
Answers: can anyone recomend a cookbook or website, or just personal advice on how to start cooking vegan meals.
like can most ingredients be found in a regular grocery store? and is there certain kinds of tofu or soy products that are better then the rest.
You just have to start and not be afraid. It's no different than traditional cooking, IMO.
Compassionate Cooks (compassionatecooks.org) has wonderful DVD on vegan cooking along with explanations on the different kinds of Tofu and other vegan staples. Plus it comes with recipes for a number of delicious dishes with a cooking show on how to do it. I loved the DVD even though I knew how to cook already.
VegWeb has more than 6,000 vegan recipes.
DVD http://compassionatecooks.org/video.htm
Start simple. Make sloppy joes or chili or pasta with edame or protein crumbles. Lentil soup with salad and walnuts sprinkled on top. Veggie burgers, black bean burritos. Just do the same thing without the cheese and meat, substituting lentils, black beans, nuts, where the meat was. Then you can get the uncheese cookbook.
Food processors are a must for more fancy cooking.
Nearly all ingredients come from the regular grocery store. Dried or canned beans, whole wheat pastas, brown rice, spices, veggies, etc.,
Soy, rice, almond milk is also found in regular stores. As with Earth Balance butter substitute.
Non-dairy yogurt is also found there. And some have many choices of non-meat slices. Check the organic section.
So-called specialty items, like Nutritional yeast can be purchased in bulk online or a health food store. Take a tour of your health food store and ask for help locating vegan items, there should be someone there to help you too.
www.theveganchef.com or www.veganchef.com
I am not a vegan BUT I DO collect cookbooks and I do cook vegetarian and vegan dishes. The best cookbooks that cover vegan are the vegetarian cookbooks. True that you will only be able to cook about 75% of the dishes but in general there are more options available under Vegetarian rather than Vegan.
I like Deborah Madison - Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone
and
Madhur Jaffrey's - World Vegetarian
and
Karen Lee and Diane Porter - The occasional Vegetarian
The Moosewood books are ok as well. I find the the original Mooswood is the best of the bunch.
Happy Cooking
You can eat a healthy and balanced vegan diet with products from most grocery stores, though you might have to stop into a health food store or go online to get nutritional yeast (a source of vitamin B-12 AND it makes dishes taste cheesy).
My favorite vegan cooking show is at
http://www.theppk.com
The dishes are fantastic, I have NEVER tried a recipe from them that was anything less than spectacular.
this website has so many resources that will help you:
http://vegweb.com/
I'd recommend just getting your boyfriend to do the shopping and cooking. Let him deal with finding the vegan products.