[mersey]

LOL that was a long title.

Hi all I am hoping to find other mums and dads to hold my hand with converting my families diet to essentially vegan.

I have a 10 year old (Hannah) DD who is happy to be veg*n BUT she HATES most veg and beans...she is working on it. She is lactose intolerant.

I also have a 2.5 year old DD (Lielle). She is quite good with veg and non meat foods and will also drink flavoured soy milk. I am still giving her cows milk and yoghurt as I dont feel confident dropping dairy. I also give her canned baby food every second day which has meat in it. Again its just confidence as I am not fully clued up on how to provide a balanced intake of food for her minus animal products (yet).

And I have a 10 month old DD too (Mersey). I have switched her with some reservations to soy formula.

She began life on cows formula as my boobs did not even lactate at all! Nothing worked.

Now she is on soy based formula and she loves it.

She loves her food too and eats pretty much what we eat just cut up small. But I also give her yoghurt and canned baby food with meat every 2nd day till I feel confident I have substituted all the necessary nutrients in her diet with a veg diet.

As for DH and I. Well at the moment we are not eating meat and I am not eating dairy or eggs but we have not exactly learned how to plan a well balanced veg*n diet yet. We need

LOL.

Well thats a long intro. I hope to get some friendship and support from more clued up and confident mammas.

Angela

 

[poppyseed]

Hi, well done. My friend has three kids under three and all have been vegan since birth, so I suppose they have never had meat/dairy.

They love all soy products, cereal bars that are vegan. They too are not to keen on veg, but all kids are like that!. She blends the cooked veg sometimes.

They drink Alpro soya milk and her youngest is only a week old and she breast feeds and tops up with soya formula.

Her two toddlers are healthy and growing well. The trick is variety, I think. Use your imagination, it does get easier.

As treats they eat banana chips, coconut bits, fruit and of course vegan choc,.

Basically they eat the same as their parents, so what you eat as a healthy vegan is fine for them.

 

[mersey]

Hiya

Thanks for replying

Hope it gets easier - I am finding some mealtimes a bit stressful as I have the think long and hard about every food prep I do now. Cant switch on the auto-pilot anymore.

Plus husband and eldest daughter are now philisophically still with me on this persuit BUT are saying things like

'yes, I think milk is disgusting, wrong for us and cruel but right now I really want an icecream...'

I say 'whatever floats your boat' as they already know the same things about animal based products as I do, so it is their choice. But it is annoying to be getting told 'dont feed us animal products ever - but when we feel like it we will get easy junkfood with animal products in it'.

Its like, my efforts in the kitchen are wasted on their impulses at other times. But thats my problem LOL.

On a good note I made a wickedly yum minestrone the other day and got 3 meals for the whole family out of it

. It cost $14 australian to make as I used canned beans but I coulda made it cheaper by far. Yet it still worked out super cheap in the end and super yum. Very happy. It wasnt a true minestrone, dunno what it was but it was vegan, packed with healthyness and yummo LOL.

talk soon

xx

Ang

PS thanks for the snacks tips

 

[jeneticallymodified]

congrats on your decision, and welcome to vb!

i don't have kids, but am aware that there are some excellent books around (maybe even orderable from your local library) on raising kids without meat and dairy which might help with your confidence doing this- i know that having a book written by someone who knows what they're talking about reinforces my confidence when it comes to going against the grain with all the stuff we've been told about healthy eating revolving around dairy and the like! i'm sure some mums and dads on here will be able to point you in the right direction on this...*hint hint helpful mums and dads!*

also, if you havent yet, you might want to post something in the australia forum- not just to say hi, but about info on some new food alternatives- especially for stuff lke icecream- i know what i can get in the uk and canada, but i'd be stumped looking for some tasty vegan icecreams in australia (its summer over there right now too, i think, so being without/torn over icecream must be awful for you, lol!). i think that once you've tried some alternatives for stuff you don't want to have any more, and found which ones are really yummy, it'll be easier to go for the vegan versions, when stuff like icecream is calling you from across the grocery store, lol... i guess if all else fails, there is always sorbet.... but sometimes its just not the same

anyway, good luck with it all, and i hope it gets easier for you soon- i'm sure that once you've got into the swing of things and amassed some of the handy tips and wisdom from the numerous helpful folks round here, it'll be a breeze!

 

[sararie]

I'm not the greatest expert at the being veg*n..we are bc my eldest daughter (15mths) is allergic to milk eggs and soy. don't know about our little one (6wks) yet. you can sub rice/soy milk in most recipes. there is a list of eggs subs I can send you if you want. check out your local library for veggie cookbooks and they will even usually give you a weekly type menu. the recipes here are great. check out recipes/cookbooks for allergies too. they tend to have great ideas for items without eggs and milk (but not guaranteed meatless)

there are ways to hide veggies..i mush cauliflower in with my mashed potatoes...and shred veggies to put in sauces and pasta. my hubby doesn't notice. my gals all love veggies (despite the fact that most kids might not)

If you have any questions or want to pm about veg*nizing a recipe, I will do what I can...hopefully some people who have been at this a bit longer than myself will chime in.

HTH and good luck!

 

[mersey]

Thanks heaps!

hoodedclawjem - thanks for suggesting the aussie forum. I was thinking of posting a hello there but LOL it took your post to make me twig that they are the ones to ask about vegan foods in Aus LOL. Yes it is summer and I am shocked to say that ice-cream matters HEHE at times like this. No sorbet so does not 'hit the spot'. But I dont know why they want ice-cream as guranteed after they have it they feel sick and DD gets really quite ill after it and yet still wants it LOL. Thanks for your support x

sararie - thanks for your info. I would love to see the egg subsitute list. And appreciate having your offer of help veganising recipes. I dont know if you have heard of NasiGoreng it is an asian/indonsian rice dish. Well I am so silly I thought that because of no meat/eggs we couldn't have it any more. But we had a power blackout the other night and our meal was ruined. So we went to get takeaway and what do you know? Vegetarian Nasi goreng was on the menu and it was YUM!! Dont know if it was fully vegan but now I am convinced it could be and still be totally yum and filling which is a relief lol.

6week old baby? ohh cluck cluck how cute.

Oh your 15 month old is allergic to soy? so it is possible to be veg*n and not have soy too? I want to have some soy in our diet but not too much as I have a disease which is estrogen stimulated (and soy has estrongen thingos in it), so I would love to talk to you about that.

 

[missbelgium]

Hi there ! I was raised lacto/ovo myself and am now raising my 5 year-old the same way (althopugh when I was a kid, there weren't nearly as many soy products in the stores !).

I just bumped up another thread, started by Kikke, which is a few weeks old and which certainly contains useful information for you. Check it out !

From reading your post, I think a gradual switch would be easier for you actually. Maybe you could simply start by eliminating meat/poultry/fish, and leave the dairy for a next stage ?

There are loads of books out there with great recipes. You can also find really good info online. Don't worry too much about the nutrients. If you eat a varied diet, you will not have any major problems.

Good luck and congratulations on your decision !

 

[missbelgium]

I just want to add, when you have time, it's worth backtracking the posts on this forum. There's a lot about transitioning with kids out there. When you scroll down in this forum, you can ask for all the posts of the past year and rifle through them at leisure. I'm sure that will help !

 

[mersey]

ooh thanks missbelgium. I will have to go check the old messages out. The problem with a gradual shift for myself is I cant touch meat products knowingly anymore (THANKS PETA) . But DH and and my kids, yea, gradual is the way.

 

[missbelgium]

It's not dangerous or difficult to eliminate the meat (aka dead animals) at once. I just meant the dairy. Buy organic/free range as the less compromising choice for now.

 

[missbelgium]

Here are some good online places to start from too (including recipes):

http://www.kidshealth.org/kid/recipe...n_recipes.html

http://www.vegfamily.com/

http://www.vegetarianbaby.com/

And as I have said before and will repeat here, this is absolutely a great book :

Veggie Food for Kids, Sara Lewis

(it's a UK book so you should be able to find it !).

 

[mersey]

oh yer I knew what you meant. Sorry. I was including eggs and milk in with 'meat products'. I meant animal products.

I just cant swallow the stuff any more

THANKYOU so much for the links. And the book reccomendation. xx

 

[sararie]

what ever you would like to know about eliminating soy, just ask away. I'll do my best to help

we started out w/eliminating all soy (including oil and lecithing from her diet) but she has gotten better and now only has an issue with the protein. It is possible to be veg*n and not consume soy. I don't really like it, so we probably wouldn't have had much in the house anyway. It was easy enough to do the veg*n thing for us when we found out that she couldn't have any of those. I haven't made too many well, non traditional type foods for us. Hubby is still trying to get used to the idea. he's not taking it too terribly. he can eat whatever he wants when we go out..I do still keep turkey bacon around for him, and he has just leaned how much better tasting veggie sausages are. here's the list of egg subs and I'll be sure to check here as often as I can (am busy with the two being so little!)

Ener-G Egg Replacer (follow directions on box)

1 banana

2 Tbsp corn starch

2 Tbsp arrowroot flour

2 Tbsp potato starch

2 Tbsp soy milk powder & 2 Tbsp water

2 Tbsp mashed silken tofu

1/4 c applesauce

sometimes I just double the baking soda/pwdr. HTH