Guess who's coming to tea?

"Excuse me but someone told me you used to be vegan. Can you tell me what to put in vegan sandwiches because I've got some coming to tea"

This has not happened to me just once you understand, somehow the word got out and now I have people that I never talked to before stopping me in the school play-ground to ask me this. Strangely the vegan in question is very often the same lady and she used to run the most brilliant fast-food veggie restaurants that I have ever been to. No pressure then.

What do you need to know about the vegan diet?

Veganism is a way of living entirely on the products of plants (and for many that extends beyond food and drink). So meat, fish, shell fish, dairy (from any animal), eggs and honey are all out of the picture. Once upon a time it also excluded refined sugar because the act of refining used to involve the burning of animal bones but these days it's not usually the case however many vegans have adopted veganism as a positive health choice and may not want to eat lots of sugar anyway. Vegans never eat Quorn because it contains egg.

Other ingredients often hidden in store bought food that are not vegan include: lactose, whey, ghee, Vitamin D3 (and if it just says Vitamin D assume it is D3), shellac (E904), gelatine, L-Cysteine (E920), casein, butterfat or milk, Beeswax (E901) and beware anything that says 'omega 3 enriched' as this may be fish oil. 

Vegans do not need 'feeding up' or special vitamins, it is perfectly possible to live a healthy lifestyle even as a small child provided the diet is well constructed. It is true that iron and vitamin B12 can be low on a vegan diet but this is easily remedied with iron cooking pots and plenty of yeast extract or fortified plant milk.

So what will you have in your sandwiches?

Lets start with the bread.

Most bread is suitable for vegans but it's worth looking at the ingredients to check that there is no milk, butter, lactose or egg added to it. Of course 'normal' bread is off the menu if you are not eating wheat or gluten and here is where it get's complicated. 

Gluten free bread has come a long way in the last 20 years, hell it's come a long way in the last 2 years! It is no longer the stuff that was so 'doinky' it bared more resemblance to a large bathroom sponge than a loaf of bread (and if doinky is not a real word then it should be). No, gluten free bread is so bread-like these days that it could pretty much pass for 'normal' bread but this has come at a price. First it is often highly calorific, high in fat and frequently high in sugar and salt too. But more noticabley for the vegans amongst us it now contains egg as well as dairy.  If your bread also has to be nut free you should be OK but if it has to be yeast free you may as well give up and make your own or opt not to have sandwiches and switch to something else all together.  Check your bread very carefully,  you may not find what you are after on a supermarket shelf and be prepared that you may either have to buy a mix to make, buy crackers or buy the original 'doinky' type of g-f bread.

The yellow stuff

I love plain butter (that spreadable stuff nearly always has palm oil in which will make me very poorly) and that is fine for a vegetarian but clearly butter is not an option for vegans. You can get pure sunflower or soya 'margarine' but to be honest even the ones you might think will be pure often have coconut or palm in. Frankly if this is not something you are going to eat frequently yourself save some money and skip the spread, a tastey moist filling will more than make up for it.

Stuck in the middle

Easy-peasy fillings

• Jam.
• Yeast extract (beware the celery often added to this if you are allergic).
• Peanut butter and jelly - I know, I know, peanuts are a big no-no for those with allergies but if no-one around your table has this allergy then this is a classic, just check the ingredients on the jar first.
• Any salad - lettuce, tomato,  cucumber etc.

From the shops

• Hummus (do check ingredients).
• Miso spread.
• Vegan pate - often available from your local friendly healthfood shop.
• Soya cheese and pickles.

Easy and home made

• Grated carrot and apple.
• Grated carrot with raisins and sunflower seeds.
• Mashed banana - add a tiny drip of lemon juice to stop it going brown.
• Mashed avocado - sometimes nice to add a little vegan salad dressing or add some mashed pear.
• Mashed roasted pumpkin or squash
• Minced dates, raisins or prunes added to some finely chopped sunflower seeds.
• Nut butter or seed butter - now easily available on the high street, I love ones made with sunflower seeds.

For the more adventurous

• Home made hummus.
• Mashed beans - it is possible to do this with almost any bean but I've always liked draining a can of baked beans of juice and blitzing them in a coffee grinder. Add a little salad dressing to other beans to make them more moist.
• Scrambled tofu - chop a little onion and garlic, fry gently, add a little yeast extract then add your crumbled tofu and fry until it goes brown.
• Aubergine pate - rub an aubergine with oil and wrap in greaseproof paper, bake at gm4/180C for about 30 minutes, scape out the pulp and mash well, add 1/2 a grated onion (you may want to do all this in a food processor), a pinch of sugar, a pinch of salt and the juice of half a lemon. This also tastes nice with added 'curry flavour' try adding some fresh green chilli (minced) 1 clove of crushed garlic and 1/4 teaspoon of crushed cumin seeds.

All of these will work as well for an open sandwich on a cracker as they will on bread.

There's more?

Of course there is much more to 'tea' than just sandwiches! I'm hoping you wont need help selecting a soft drink (avoid drinks sweetened with honey) but if you want something a little stronger gin, vodka, Scotch, whiskey and brandy are (unless flavoured) always vegan. If it's beer you are after I suggest you check CAMRA's excellent list www.camra.org.uk/veganbeers and for wines check www.veggiewines.co.uk/wine.htm . If you are wondering what it is in alcohol that makes it non-vegan I can tell you it's the stuff they use to make it go clear, its usually isinglass, an extract from the swim bladder of the sturgeon fish.

For desert just go with fruit or soya deserts from your local supermarket but you might want to try some cake....I'm working on that for the next post! 

For more information on veganism the vegan society is a great place to start www.vegansociety.com/