Foods Tried Whilst Taking Part in Veganuary

January has been a long one hasn’t it? I decided to take part in Veganuary kind of last minute on a whim – because if two friends were going from full carnivore to vegan for a month then surely I, as a vegetarian, could manage it. Right?

In all honesty, I didn’t find it difficult up until the last week and a half. Since then I’ve been full on craving cheese and chocolate. I did it though, and I’m definitely going to be making some changes to my regular diet as a result… I tried a few new things this month so I thought I’d do a little review of those foods.

Vegan Sweet Treats

Most things I bought were snack foods/treats, and this is primarily because I discovered that my main meals really are vegan most of the time when I take out the cheese or avoid using the non-vegan quorn. That wasn’t too difficult of a change. The most difficult was finding snacks and easy breakfasts – most have milk in the ingredients!

Anyway these Pulsin bars were the first things that I bought because I figured they’d be great for before or after a gym session. I can’t say I loved them, but they were definitely edible… They weren’t quite sweet enough for me and quite dry in texture so I found them both difficult to finish. I couldn’t finish the Vego bar either. I was disappointed in this one because everyone seems to rave about the Vego bars. The chocolate was okay, but if I’d have known it had massive hazelnuts stuck throughout I probably wouldn’t have bought it.

I picked up the Swedish Glace ice cream simply because it was cheaper than the Alpro Hazelnut at the time. Again the chocolate was okay, but it has a weird texture for me. I’m not sure if it was just the one I had though as it looked and tasted as though it had partially defrosted and then frozen again so it was a little funny tasting.

This mini moos chocolate has been my absolute favourite new try this month. I only tried these two chocolate bars the whole month because I’m not really a fan of dark and I didn’t want to keep buying things in the hopes of it tasting like milk chocolate.

I couldn’t resist this one though when I spotted it in Holland & Barrett. The idea of a honeycomb style chocolate well and truly drew me in, and I had no regrets. It was really tasty and I loved the crunch of whatever the honeycomb was made out of.

Healthy(er) Crisps

I’ve tried the Eat Real brand of crisps previously but honestly I can never remember whether I’ve eaten houmous, lentil, quinoa or whatever else they do. I picked up these two different ones because I figured they’d be good for snacking on whilst at work. Despite the really small portions in huge bags, I do really love these crisps.

I preferred the sea salt over the chilli & lemon, but both do the job. I actually find these really filling too, thanks to them being made out of lentil and chickpea flours.

I know Eat Real do have quite a varied range of crisps made out of different things but I can hardly ever find the others in my local stores. Houmous ones are probably my favourites out of what I’ve tried, but I definitely have my eye on the Quinoa Puffs!

Vegan Food Replacements

In the first week I decided to try some vegan cheese and also set out to find a replacement for my usual Quorn chicken slices. I ended up with Violife and the Cheatin’ Turkey Slices. The cheese was okay, but I don’t think it really had much taste. Of course there are plenty of other vegan cheeses that I’m sure have more taste in them. I just decided to not bother with any others and rid of the cheese completely.

The Cheatin’ Turkey Slices were weird. The texture was very much like turkey – even my mum was impressed. I couldn’t figure out the taste for so long, but I did quite enjoy these. Great on a sandwich with a bit of avocado! I think I need to try more of the Cheatin’ range, but again they’re difficult to come by for me. My local H&B doesn’t even have a fridge, so I have to go to the next local one.

Some of you may have seen the announcement of a new Tesco-only range of foods called Wicked. I tried the BBQ Mushroom pizza and the Mac’n’Cheese. The pizza was delicious, and definitely satisfied my pizza craving quite early on in the month. It’s not something I would buy every week being at £4 per pizza, but it’s a great easy treat when every other shop-bought pizza is off limits and full of cheese. I wasn’t a fan of the mac myself, but I know plenty who have enjoyed it. I just don’t particularly like ready/microwave meals.