Hi Aeden. Welcome to Permies.
My youngest brother is vegan, and my much better half and I routinely make meals that I would call "accidentally vegan." That is, I prepare meals from the pantry that happen to be plant-based, including olive oil, from scratch, and from culinary traditions that didn't include animal products. There's a wealth of flavour to discover in the different culinary traditions of the world. Most of my favourites are Indian, and unless I am soaking dried beans, most take under an hour to prepare in the kitchen.
I would suggest that you cook from scratch. Processed, ready-to-eat meals aren't reliably healthy, and often contain palm oil, which my much better half and I have decided to cut out completely for various reasons.
I tend to suggest to vegans that if what they are doing is for ethical and ecological reasons, that they then really look at the processing and outcomes of the vegan industry on the planet. Vegan foods that use ingredients that are actively extractive, or that utilise the same destructive practices as conventional agriculture, are no better for the overall system than the conventional omnivore alternatives.
Some of the issues to look into are the specific farming practices used, the inclusion of ingredients that we know to be problematic already, such as almonds and palm oil, and the country of origin (I don't like
my stuff to have travelled too far, or to have come from places with lower food standards than here in Canada, or to have travelled through ports known to be used to confuse country-of-origin tracking).
Lastly, I look at the ingredients list. When I get tinned coconut cream, I want two ingredients on that list: coconut cream and
water, and I could do without the water.
Most of these suggestions actually apply equally to vegans as they do to anyone else. The
dairy cream I put in my
coffee has two ingredients, and that's because it's half-and-half. I think it's as important to source locally, and meet the farmer, if possible, for vegans as omnivores. We cut out so much of the added food-miles that way, and you can actually check the conditions in which your food is growing. Fields tilled to fine dust is a sign to look elsewhere, as the toll on the environment, and on anything that tried to live in those fields, is too high for my liking.
My biggest tip would be to not try to replace meat in terms of taste and texture. A grilled portobello
mushroom cap can be delicious for all the same reasons an omni loves their burgers, but the comparison, holding mushroom to meat standards, only causes your enjoyment of the mushroom to suffer. Love your food for the food's sake, and make sure it's the best food it can be.
I hope some of these tips have been useful. I have more,
should you want them. Be aware of your health, above all. The amount of good you can do is limited if you cripple yourself with an incomplete diet, so make sure you're hitting that nutritional yeast and those supplements at need.
Keep us posted, and good luck.
-CK
A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.
-Robert A. Heinlein
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