The Vegan/Vegetarian Challenge (Veganuary)

Earlier this year I met some friends who are dedicated vegans and they were promoting Veganuary (a month of eating vegan only food). This was so that people could take advantage of the fact that they are filled with a desire to change their lifestyle into something healthier after the excesses of the festive period. It’s also very good on your wallet as it’s a lot cheaper than buying meat on a regular basis. While I wanted to join them, I wasn’t sure how I would go about doing that and I had decided to undertake a different challenge and that was Dryanuary. This is where you give up alcohol for a month which I achieved, although it was not without its difficulties as I was still undergoing a healthy eating challenge but I was very happy about the result it produced. I also repeated the experiment abroad, 3 months later, with my family; however, we did slip up for Easter which was in the middle of this abstinence.

Now fast forward to July where I’m very busy again in my life, don’t have a lot of money, need nutritious food quickly that is portable and not too messy. So I come up with doing the aforementioned quest as I also have some other vegetarian/vegan friends that I see on a fairly regular basis. This has so far been relatively easy for me which is surprising as when I have tried to do it in the past it has failed quite quickly as I just didn’t have the knowledge that I do know to make it work. Education is very important if you are going to do something like this because otherwise you will just get bored and revert to your old habits, and this is not what you are trying to accomplish here. A wide recipe base and expertise of cooking techniques are essential here as well as well-stocked larders/cupboards. Since they're not too expensive you can stock up on your carbs like beans, grains, lentils, rices, etc. quite cheaply. You will also be in need of a gamut of herbs and spices in order to properly flavour your food. A visit to your world foods aisle will assist in this endeavour if you don’t have specialist shops in your area. We’re not aiming to get a plethora of spice mixes or ready-made sauces though; the idea is that everything should be as fresh as possible and uncomplicated as well. Your taste buds will thank you for spending the extra time to create a memorable meal rather than a tasteless one that you eat because you’re hungry and do not wish to waste the food you just cooked.

If you’re struggling to find quality ingredients, sign up to Olio. It’s a mobile app that allows food sharing. It's things that people have that they're not going to use in the near future and rather than waste these resources, they have decided to donate it to the public so a fellow user can pick it up for free and make use of it. We all have various items that we bought intending to make fabulous dishes out of because we saw a stunning recipe on TV, but all too often life gets in the way and so it lies forgotten in the back of a drawer, languishing until we discover it again in the midst of a kitchen sort out. This resolves that problem, as there is so much food in the world that is produced but doesn’t get eaten and I think that is just abhorrent, so this goes some way to rectifying that misdemeanour. After all, the world is always a much nicer place if we help each other isn’t it and everyone feels better after performing a good deed don’t they?