We're only 2 weeks into this new life journey, but we are LOVING each and every single minute of it!

We have discovered that being non meat eaters in not only every bit as tasty (food wise) as before we lived this way, but also that we feel better, stay fuller longer, require less food to live on, and also stay more, ahem, regular.

Our families are surprisingly ok with it, and my MIL even took me out to a restaurant today, considering that I won't eat meat. God bless that woman!

I've learned to eat Total to help combat vitamin B12 deficiency, and to try to make our meals well rounded.

Can anyone offer a newbie vegetarian some pointers? Is there anything I'm missing?

Thanks for offering such a wonderful community for us earth and animal friendly like minded individuals. :D

Congrats on two weeks! :)

Congratulations!

If you are still eating dairy, you are probably getting your B-12 there. But I would discourage a heavy reliance on dairy--not because I am vegan, lol, but because I've noticed many people having trouble digesting it when they increase their intake to make up for the lack of meat. Try experimenting with nuts, beans, lentils, tofu, tempeh--all that good stuff. If you are anything like me, you will only feel better and better as you continue to make these positive changes!

:bobo: Good luck!

Congrats. Sounds like you are doing fine...but if ever in doubt there are a lot of helpfull folk around here :)

I'd watch out for things like gelatin, lard, rennet, ect. . .
http://www.peta.org/mc/factsheet_display.asp?ID=72
Welcome to VB!

Thank you so much everyone!!! We definately look out for geletain and lard. No more marshiemallows for us! No biggie because they were never that great tasting to me anyways.

We are also cutting our dairy back considerably too. We only go through one gallon of milk a week, and have started to buy soy milk too as a replacement.

I may start giving away our eggs, just because we don't use them much. We were never big egg eaters anyway.

We do like cheese, but have experimented with some soy cheese, and it tastes just as good to us as the dairy cheese. Our son even likes it!!!

The only thing that I'm not willing to give up just yet is my sour cream. I use it as a dip mix for my veggies (tomato & basil snack dip from Watkins is to die for!), put it on my chik patties from Morningstar, and have found many other uses for it for flavoring stuff with. Of course I use the reduced fat, since I'm trying to watch my girlie figure. If anyone has found a good replacement for sour cream and cream cheese, please let me know.

We are really getting into eating black beans, baked beans, nuts, hummus, lentil soup, and tofu. I'd like to try tempeh too, but am not sure where to get this from? Any help on that one would be great too.

Thanks again everyone! I'm so excited about the change!!!

If anyone has found a good replacement for sour cream and cream cheese, please let me know.
Tofutti's better than cream cheese!
I'm sure a lot of veg*ans on here would agree, as there has been tons of threads about it in the past
http://www.tofutti.com/

Tofutti's Sour Supreme is a fantastic sour cream replacer. MMMMMMMM! I can find it at health food stores and it's also at Star Market and a couple other of the big chains I think. Better than Cream Cheese rocks as well, I have omni friends who prefer it hands down to dairy cream cheese.
Tempeh I've pretty much only found at small health food stores at Wild Oats or Whole Foods.
Consider picking up How It All Vegan. I'm not vegan (yet?) but it's my favorite cookbook and has fantastic recipes and suggestions for vegan substitutes that could be helpful for your cooking and baking if you're not keeping products like eggs on hand. Flax "eggs" totally rule

Thanks again to all who responded!

Unfortunately, the closest health food store to here is an hour away, so I'm kind of limited to what I can get from Walmart and our local grocery store.

The next time that we make a trip there, I'll have to check in again. Maybe they'll have some of the Tempeh & Tofutti for us to try. If they're really good, I can always stock up on them.

Thanks for the tip on the cookbook too! I'll look for it online here.

Ok, now another question from the newbie. Any tips on making whole grain breads in the bread machine? My MIL just gave us a bread machine, and I would love to be able to make Millet bread in it, like you can buy at the health food stores. We love whole grains and healthy breads, so any ideas would be great!

Thanks again everyone! You're all great!

Thanks again to all who responded!

Unfortunately, the closest health food store to here is an hour away, so I'm kind of limited to what I can get from Walmart and our local grocery store.

The next time that we make a trip there, I'll have to check in again. Maybe they'll have some of the Tempeh & Tofutti for us to try. If they're really good, I can always stock up on them.

Thanks for the tip on the cookbook too! I'll look for it online here.

Ok, now another question from the newbie. Any tips on making whole grain breads in the bread machine? My MIL just gave us a bread machine, and I would love to be able to make Millet bread in it, like you can buy at the health food stores. We love whole grains and healthy breads, so any ideas would be great!

Thanks again everyone! You're all great!

The Sour Supreme is awesome! :D You will love it. And the non-dairy cream cheese makes the best fake cream cheese icing for cakes ever AND the best fake cheesecakes ever!

Hey! Congrats on 2 weeks!

You sound like you are doing well and eating well, I found tempeh at my local grocery store, it was in the "soy and tofu" section. But they don't have any Tofutti products. :( It's a pretty small grocery store.

Try lost of different foods and veggies! The posibilites are (almost) endless for veggie meals!

Ok, now another question from the newbie. Any tips on making whole grain breads in the bread machine? My MIL just gave us a bread machine, and I would love to be able to make Millet bread in it, like you can buy at the health food stores. We love whole grains and healthy breads, so any ideas would be great!

Thanks again everyone! You're all great!

I can't lead you to any specific threads regarding making millet bread in the machine, but here's a link to a list of bread related threads to get you started:

http://www.veggieboards.com/boards/search.php?searchid=827263

Thank you again everyone! I couldn't get the bread link to work, but I can try to do a search and see what I come up with.

I'm making a list of all of these recommended products so that I know what to look for!

We've already tried Tom's of Maine products and really like those, and also the Jason line too. We're getting there, slowly but surely!

Strange, I know I replied to this thread because I'm getting the updates but I don't see my post. Oh well....

Anyway, dylansmom, where are you located?

Michigan

Sounds like you're doing well. :) Here's some websites with recipes and info on nutrition.

www.vegweb.com
www.vrg.org
www.veganmania.com
www.veganhealth.org

Thanks for the links! I'll definately be checking them out!

Instead of sour cream I sometimes use guacamole, salsa or onion. Instead of cream cheese I sometimes use margarine or butter- usually on bagels. Margarine isn't very healthy though.

Agreed on the margarine. We won't use because it's hydrogenized. We try to stay away from that.

If anyone does not want to use butter though, Promise makes a good margarine that has NOT been hydrogenized. I'm not sure if it's vegetarian/vegan, but I do know that it's heart healthy. We stopped getting it because it was expensive compared to buying real butter.

b12 is an issue, even if you're eating fortified foods. do a search for b12 absorption and you'll find a rather lengthy post (written by me) regarding the 'types' of b12 available for fortification (cynocobalamin) and how absorbable it is. total uses cynocobalamin, and while it gives the RDA at 100%--it's the grams in cynocobalamin, not the absorbable amount.

your best bet is straight cobalamin--whcih comes only from animals and animal products. your second best bet is to take sublingual cynocobalamin. i have yet to find a vitamin that offers methylcobalamin that gives the origin of this (animal or other).

anyway, the information is around. i'll try to find it myself and link it here.

actually, vegetable oils used as margerine aren't really that heart healthy. either forgo butter and margerine altogether (it can be done) or use butter as it is more heart healthy than vegetable oils in those forms (particularly when cooked or heated).

i recommend the books Fats that Heal, Fats that Kill by Udo Erasmus, PhD and Know Your Fats by Mary Enig, PhD. Both of these people are biochemists, researching in fats particularly, and nutritionists. This will explain a lot about the way that fats work and which are healthiest and how to use them.

You may also be interested in the Coconut oil thread in the General Health Forum.

cool, good luck.. if you have kids, theyll usually adapt to it easier than adults will/do.

You dont live near Nj anywhere do you? lol i have a veggie bbq comming up this saturday.:hi:

I wish I did! That veggie BBQ sounds awesome!!! I live in MI, so that'd be one heck of a drive to get to that BBQ. LOL!!! I appreciate the invite though! Very thoughtful of you.

actually, vegetable oils used as margerine aren't really that heart healthy. either forgo butter and margerine altogether (it can be done) or use butter as it is more heart healthy than vegetable oils in those forms (particularly when cooked or heated).



That's pretty much what I do. I don't want butter because it's dairy, but I don't want veg*n marg because of the hydrogenation (I once read how margerine is made, eughhh, put me off it for life) now I just spread houmous or avocado or homemade pesto on bread instead of butter or marg. To stir fry or saute I use extra virgin olive oil because it's more stable than most other oils at high temperatures and doesn't break down making free radicals so easily. For salad dressings I either use olive oil again (always extra virgin cold pressed) or flaxseed oil - all those good omega 3's! and mostly I just mix it with either cider vinegar or lemon juice, and pepper ohhhhhhh lots of pepper.:lick:

I saw the fats that heal fats that kill in the library. It seemed like a big book.
It had a section about best fats to worst fats. I don't remember the orders but I believe it was something along the lines of flaxseed, avocado, olive, fish, coconut, butter, margarine, trans.