Cecil the Lion, and other animals too...

My 10 Favourite Dairy Alternatives

This post is for those who have learned about the truth of the dairy industry and the health implications of eating dairy and who want to transition to a dairy-free diet but might not have the full information about what they can eat instead!

:)

For Milk:

1. Koko Coconut milk. This is the best milk substitute I've found so far. I actually didn't realise how good it was until someone at work told me that they put it in glass bottles to trick their kids into thinking it was real dairy milk and it worked! Then I actually thought I'd have a taste of it straight from the carton to test it and lo and behold it's up there with semi-skimmed Donegal Creameries milk. Minus the puss and enslavement of innocent beings. This is perfect in tea, coffee, cereal, baking, or even on its own. It has no taste of coconut either by the way incase you thought that might be weird. It would be weird. However be warned people: make sure if you go out looking for this that you don't get confused and buy the Alpro Coconut milk because it is vile.

PS. You can get chocolate "milk" from this brand too and it is so delicious! If you're feeling American!

2. The next best one I would say is the Organic Alpro Soya milk. Not the non-organic one - just the organic one - they do taste different. I don't know if you could drink this one straight like normal milk but it's perfectly fine in tea and cereal and the like.

For cheese: 

Let me talk about cheese for a second here. Melted cheese is not an easy thing to replicate and I havn't come across many good vegan versions - however - I have never looked for them or bought them. My only time experiencing melted vegan cheese was when I ordered a vegan pizza in England when I lived there. The first time it was lovely, the second time it was absolutely vile. They were from two different restaurants though and more than likely used different "cheeses". So if you are obsessed with melted cheese you are just going to have to wean yourself off it. Think of the puss and the scabby udders and the poor cows.

Now I have only experienced vegan cheese cold once and I was very very impressed with this one.

1. Violife cheese slices. I bought these once in London just out of curiosity to see if I could replicate a ham and cheese sandwich, And I could! It was amazing actually how much it reminded me of sliced cheese. I had the mozzerella flavoured one and I really liked it. For texture it was identical (in my opinion), and in flavour, it was definitely like a cheap sliced-cheese, but very authentic. So if people like their cheese sandwiches, this is your go-to product! I didn't try it melted but if anyone likes cheese toasties and tries it with this please let me know how you get on.

Photo courtesy of: http://independentkitchen.co.uk/vegan-parmesan/

2. Parmesan. Now for a fun one you can make yourself! One of my housemates in England has a blog focusing on vegan and vegetarian recipes and she is a genius! She came up with this parmesan alternative and it is so so good. It's so easy to make as well. You need about 4 ingredients, the main ones being cashews (unsalted) and nutritional yeast. Nutritional yeast is another vegan staple ingredient. It's a flaky kind of substance and is very nutty and cheesy. It's light so you can sprinkle it over any savoury dish for extra flavour. Click here for her recipe. (Her name is Danni go look at her blog for excellent vegan recipes and ignore her vegetarian ones :D )

For butter:

1. Pure Soya butter. This stuff is an all-round winner. It tastes like real butter, it's soft, and it's cheaper than real butter! (Where we live anyway) My mum buys this now instead of normal butter for herself, myself and my dad. The boys are still afraid of anything that isn't "normal". Be careful not to buy the olive one instead because I have tried that and it's not as good. The soya one is best.

For ice-cream:

1. I've only tried this once. It was raw too - the only ingredients were cashews, water and vanilla! It was definitely identical to ice-cream because it was so rich I felt sick afterwards. But if you like ice-cream and can't go without then this is for you. Except it costs a small fortune so maybe you should save it for special occasions and try my next idea instead!

2. Nana ice-cream! Or Nice cream! Whatever you want to call it...!

But basically, to make a really healthy and really tasty homemade ice-cream, all you need to do is get some (5/6/7) frozen ripe bananas, chop them up and put them in a good blender, or food processor. Your blender/food processor needs to be very good for this because frozen bananas are rock hard. You should even let them sit for 10 minutes before blending and use a bit of water or milk add moisture and help them blend.

You will need a tad bit of patience for this because the frozen bananas get stuck up above the blade a lot and you need to keep getting a spatula and pushing them down, but trust me, it's worth it. The best thing is too, you can literally add anything you want to make different flavours. Cacao powder for chocolate, strawberries for strawberry flavour, raspberries for raspberry flavour (duh), peanut butter, etc etc. I would suggest though that you use dates or coconut sugar for a bit of extra sweetness. 

Oh and please for the love of God could people please learn what a ripe banana is! It is not yellow! It is speckled brown! With yellow underneath! If the stem or any part of the banana is green it is very under-ripe and the sugars won't be developed and therefore the vitamins and minerals won't be developed and it will be starchy and give you constipation and bad digestion! You will even know yourself by the smell, a ripe banana always smells sweet and banana-like whereas a yellow/green banana doesn't really smell of anything except maybe twigs. Look this up if you must but please don't make a banana smoothie or banana ice-cream with unripe bananas and then complain that it wasn't nice.

For mayonnaise: 

1. This one is really easy because there are mayo substitutes everywhere! I just picked this one for the picture because it's organic and organic is always better! But get whichever one you want because any fake mayo is better than the real thing. Actually I'm just thinking mayo isn't actually dairy because it's made from egg but it's white so let's classify it as the same for this occasion.

But yeh this can be used as the real thing in sandwiches and to make nice dips and different sauces or spreads for wraps and stuff. Some of the mayo substitutes can be slightly like salad cream though...which I love...but if you don't - sorry. However, if you get some soya natural yoghurt and mix that in, it will neutralise the flavour a bit and make it more subtle and bland like real mayo!

For yoghurt

1. Alpro yoghurts are excellent. They come in all the different yoghurt flavours like fruit, berries etc plus natural, vanilla etc. There is no soya taste off it and the texture is identical to normal yoghurt. I can't really find a fault with these.

2. Coyo might not be as well known but they are really nice, They're definitely different to normal yoghurts though so you need to be slightly open minded. They are really tasty though and come in loads of favours. The texture is kind of thick and it separates slightly but you just mix it all up and you're good to go. It's just another option anyway.

So folks I hope you found this helpful! I just want to make it as easy as possible for anyone interested in trying out this lifestyle. Obviously there are plenty more dairy alternatives out there but these are the ones I use and that are available in Ireland from the supermarkets or health food shops. If you're wondering about chocolate that's not actually hard to get. Most dark chocolates are milk-free so just check the back of any dark chocolate! Green and Blacks is good but they're all similar enough. If anyone has any questions please mail me on facebook if you know me and if not just comment under this post or on YouTube or on Instagram.

Thank you 

Amy

xxx

Vegan eco holiday vlog #2 Algarve Portugal

Vegan holiday vlog #1 | Eco-hostal Algarve

10 Simple Vegan Breakfast Ideas

Here's a pretty comprehensive rundown of really simple and really healthy (well some more than others) breakfast ideas for people who maybe might want to take veganism one meal at a time! Enjoy :)

1. A mono-meal of fruit! Mono-meal meaning eating a lot of one fruit, it could be 10 bananas, 3 cartons of strawberries, 6 mangoes, apples, oranges etc. etc. you catch my drift! Why is this easy? Because no prep involved except lifting and putting to mouth.
   
   
   Why is it healthy? Mono-meals of fruit are the easiest thing for your stomach to digest. Fruit is the fastest digesting food for our bodies which means the body doesn’t have to strain to digest it. It does it with ease, leaving more energy to do other things like heal and play!
   
   
   The reason mono-meals are better than mixed fruit meals is because if you give the body different types of fruit all at once it will have to struggle slightly as different types of fruit are digested at different speeds. So eating the one type of fruit is best.
   
   
   
   Oh here’s an important tip: melons can be digested in 15 mins – provided you don’t have any dead rotting flesh stuck in your gut– so always eat melon alone…for optimum digestion. If you have good digestion 24 / 7 then you may disregard this and experiment!
2. A fruit smoothie! There are so many options here I don’t even know if there’s a point explaining! Basically get 1 or 2 fruits that are reasonably similar in sweetness or in the same fruit groups so they digest well together, put in the blender (to the top), add some sort of liquid like water, coconut water, plant based milk, apple juice, orange juice etc., some greens or nuts or powders, or any fancy stuff you want in your smoothie to make you feel like you’re eating superfoods, something to give it extra sweetness because your blending the fruit with something less sweet so like dates, coconut sugar, or lucuma powder (never tried it but heard it nice) and blend! 
   
3. Cereal! An old traditional favourite, how simple can you get. Just find your favourite plant based milk and pick a relatively clean cereal. I would highly recommend organic cereals, gluten free is good, and the lesser processed the better and check the ingredients to make sure there is no milk or honey! If you get a plain cereal you can always jazz it up with the likes of dates, goji berries, nuts, seeds, agave syrup, fresh berries, banana etc.! Again the possibilities are endless! 
    Picture: http://www.top.me/nutrition/goji-berries-everything-you-ever-wanted-to-know-about-the-fruit-of-immortality-2543.html
   
   
4. Toast. Hi I said simple breakfast ideas! Try to get organic bread because word on the street is that wheat is GMO and sprayed with all kinds of dirty filthy chemicals. That being said though I myself do not buy organic bread (because my mum buys the bread). But when I don’t live at home I don’t really buy bread unless I see organic bread. Oh and sorry to break it to anyone Irish, our beloved traditional brown bread and soda bread is not vegan. It has buttermilk and butter in it.
   
   
   This is unfortunate but I have, on my mental to-do list, a plan to try to make a vegan version. I have seen some recipes online I just need to get a day to do it. If successful I will share.
   
   
   But yeh don’t be afraid of toast! If it is a whole organic toast it’s a natural enough food! High carb for the win!
   
5. Beans on toast J People like beans on toast! And it’s vegan too….do I need to explain this anymore? People surely know how to make beans on toast? Try organic baked beans if you can spend the extra few cent...it's just better for everyone.
   
   
   
6. Scrambled tofu…oooh yeessss I went there…. :)  But no just wait until I explain here. Scrambled tofu is a vegan take on scrambled egg, minus the chicken period. It is really similar in texture and colour and personally when I made it first I thought it tasted like scrambled egg! But it’s been a while so I don’t know how similar it really was but my aunty and uncle absolutely loved it and they know the real thing. There are so many recipes online but I’ll give you a list of what I put into it, and you can look at actual recipes online to get a general estimate of quantities: Firm tofu, plant based milk, vegan mayo, turmeric, cumin, paprika, nutritional yeast, salt&pepper, I might have put lemon juice in to….but check the recipes online for a breakfast version and experiment! It’s amazeballs. 

   
   Photo courtesy of: http://vegandad.blogspot.ie/2008/10/vegan-moms-scrambled-tofu.html
   
   
7. Smoothie bowls! Smoothie bowls have taken Instagram by storm….mainly because they look pretty. But they are basically just thicker smoothies in a bowl with toppings of your choice.
   
   
   They can be anything from berries, shredded coconut, coconut sugar, crushed nuts, goji berries etc. Personally I think smoothie bowls should be thicker than drinking smoothies so kind of like melted icecream….so using frozen fruit along with your normal ingredients helps make it thicker. And use less water. I don’t know how obvious that one is so I had to say it..!
    Photo courtesy of: http://www.domesticate-me.com/vegan-berry-crunch-smoothie-bowl/
   
   
8. Fruit salad. I know I said it is better to eat one type of fruit at a time for your digestion’s sake but if you’re feeling adventurous or if you have a steel stomach then experiment away with different combos!
   
   
   A selection of different types of melon would be nice with passion fruit over the top! Or plums, peaches and nectarines. Or different citrus fruits in winter. Or all three…! Be an artist..! I would recommend soya natural yoghurt on top if you had to have a topping. My favourite food growing up was fruit salad and natural (Greek) yoghurt and I swear it is still unreal but with plant based yoghurt instead! (because yoghurt is cultured cow pus) J 
   Photo courtesy of: http://arsenal-scotland.blogspot.ie/2014/10/pistachio-fruit-salad-recipe-tree-with.html
9. Porridge. A big one for us in Ireland because eating fresh fruit on a cold winters day isn’t the most satisfying breakfast you can have….especially before going out in the gale force winds and icy rain. (What lovely winters we have…) SO porridge is the answer! For me anyway! What I recently learned to do is to soak my porridge over night! I do this with juice or my plant based milk and then in the morning it’s basically already cooked and all I need to do is heat it up. It’s far quicker than cooking it from scratch in the morning.

   
   

   And again porridge is a blank canvas for all your healthy sprinkles so add your berries and your nuts and your dates and you have yourself an interesting breakfast.

   
   

   If you add chia seeds to it while it’s soaking overnight too it makes it even softer and smoother in the morning. Chia seeds do some weird shit to things. But good shit. Try it honestly. 

   Photo courtesy of: http://www.taste.com.au/recipes/17292/porridge+with+banana+pecan+topping

What I eat in a day | Vegan | High Carb | xxx

The most important words ever spoken

I only just heard this speech today...iv been vegan for a year and a half and it still brought a tear to my eye to hear this speech....this man is brilliant. Please watch this x

http://youtu.be/uQCe4qEexjc

My top 9 reasons for avoiding Dairy

My Top 9 Reasons for Avoiding Dairy

1.        The main protein in milk, casein, has been proven to promote tumour growth in laboratory rats. That’s not a good sign. Watch the following Ted Talk to hear one of the leading doctors in the field of disease prevention through nutrition talk about it: (07.56) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1CN7PF10RKo

2.        Apparantly the protein found in dairy is so acidic that it needs to be buffered down by the body which prefers an alkaline state. But guess how the body buffers down the acid from dairy products: it leaches the calcium from our bones!! WTF. http://milk.elehost.com/html/why_does_calcuim_leave_the_bon.html

3.        Dairy is mucus forming in the body and therefore is a huge factor in asthma cases. I’ve heard of a few people through YouTube videos who have actually stopped using an inhaler and curing their asthma after going vegan. http://nutritionfacts.org/video/is-milk-and-mucus-a-myth/  http://nutritionfacts.org/video/treating-asthma-and-eczema-with-plant-based-diets/

4.        I’ve also heard that dairy is strongly linked to eczema and other skin problems including acne. This first study shows the link between eczema and a dairy elimination diet and the second is about acne and the link with dairy products. It’s VERY INTERESTING!  https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/jpa/20/6/20_6_353/_pdf (a study of patients with eczema put on a plant based diet and eczema symptoms are alleviated) http://nutritionfacts.org/video/saving-lives-by-treating-acne-with-diet/    http://nutritionfacts.org/video/the-acne-promoting-effects-of-milk/

5.        The rate of osteoporosis (which they tell us dairy helps fight) is HIGHER in Western countries that eat a diet high in dairy than in countries with low dairy consumption, such as Africa, where they are all mainly lactose intolerant.  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2957223/ http://fanaticcook.com/2014/01/page/2/

6.        Pus!! The poor cows are hooked up to those big metal machines for as long as they lactate and everything is sucked out of them…puss, infections and all! The milk may be pasteurised but it’s not sieved…! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8uVZeXXq0M   http://www.notmilk.com/forum/505.html

7.        Now on to the ethical issue…how do you think a cow produces milk? It’s the same as a human woman. She has to be pregnant and then give birth to lactate. Do you think cows do this on purpose over and over again so they can give their calf’s milk to humans? Aye right. They are raped by artificial insemination or tricked into getting pregnant by a bull in more old fashioned farms but either way it’s the farmer who wants them pregnant. Being pregnant isn’t plain sailing either. Things can go wrong in birth or even before. It’s not kind to force an animal into this for money. And when the calf is born and it wants to feed from its mother? No, that’s our milk, so the calf is taken away from its own mother. If you watch the Gary Yourofsky speech you’ll hear him talk about this and he says that the worst scream he ever heard was from a cow whose calf was being taken away from them. And it gets worse. If it’s a male cow it gets sent to a cage to be reared for veal. Apparently they keep them trapped in a tiny cage so they can’t move around and develop tough tissue because IT MAKES THE MEAT TASTE BETTER!!!! I am stuck for words when I think that people actually think this is ok.

8.        I don’t know how obvious this one is or not but….we are humans…..cows are cows…..we, humans, are the only species on earth to drink the milk of another animal. WTF. You know when you were younger and you joked about saying: “Haha I wonder what the first person to milk a cow was thinking!”  (!!!) How come we never actually questioned it! We just went on thinking it was right because everyone does it and everyone has been doing it for thousands of years..! People have also been murdering each other and raping women for thousands of years….does that make it ok…?! Because its tradition?! Aaaah we need to wake up from this madness..!

9.        Another weird ass thing we do as humans. We drink milk as adults! No other animal in the world does that! They drink their mothers’ milk as an infant and when they’re old enough to get their own food or eat normal food they move on. But we, as adults, still tend to drink the breast milk of a lactating cow. Aren’t we mature.

Read/watch more: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kg5GXyfMPfQ

                                http://www.notmilk.com/

                                http://www.pcrm.org/milk

                                https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJvrlwnEqbs

~ What I Eat I Eat in a Day | Raw Till 4 | High Carb | Vegan ~

3 Reasons for Why I went Vegetarian and then Vegan

1. I found out meat and dairy are DIRECTLY  linked to cancer, heart disease and stroke - 3 of the leading causes of death in the western world.
   
   Through watching the documentary  Forks Over Knives I learned that the protein (yes the Holy protein..!) in meat and dairy actually FEEDS cancer cells! This test was done on rats and when given doses of casein, the main protein found in milk, the rats developed cancerous tumours. Then when taken of the casein and fed some sort of vegetable or something to do with vegetables (can't remember exactly) the tumours shrunk, then they were put back on the casein and the tumours grew back. The scientists and doctors carrying out this experiment were literally able to turn cancer on and off using milk protein. Now I know rats are rats and humans are humans but that was enough to make me think WTF. Another really interesting study featured was the China Study which was a massive study done in China where they took the health and death records of millions of people in China over a number of years and they also recorded their eating habits and long story short> people in rural areas that lived off rice and veg and small amounts of meat (very small...maybe none) lived longer and had way less rates of cancer than those in more urban areas where they ate more meat. I linked the Wikipedia page to it which might give a better explanation but that is a basic summary and again it was enough to make me realise meat and dairy were not as healthy as we are conditioned to believe! Also featured in the documentary were two doctors Dr.Caldwell Esselstyn and Dr. T.Colin Cambell who through the China Study and other research and science based methods discovered that they could reverse heart disease through a plant based diet. This is a huge deal because it's probably the most common cause of death in Ireland and they demonstrate that through eating plant based foods and avoiding animal protein you can re-open the arteries that have been blocked through bad diet. Knowing all this there was no way I could go back to eating meat and dairy...! 
2. Animals.
   
   I found out the truth about the treatment of animals raised for food around the exact same time as finding out that animal products are bad for us but selfishly it was the health reasons that made me turn first. I didn't want to believe that the animals conditions were that bad. My whole life I actually thought animals had lovely lives and were then shot dead instantly at the end of their lives and turned into food....how naive! The documentary Food Inc woke me up from my delusions. It showed clips from chicken "factories", pig farms, dairy farms and slaughter houses. It was horrific. I couldn't watch most of it to be honest...but it was enough to make me think and wake the fuck up. And I did. Ever since then I have found out bits of truth about the food industry and the fact that we actually raise animals to then kill them for food that isn't even good for us...For me personally it's fucked up. Gary Yourofsky is the best speaker I have ever come across when it comes to animals and animal rights and noone can put it better than him. He really makes you think about the way we treat animals. It's not like the don't feel pain or fear! They do! In slaughter houses the cows can smell the death and they know whats coming so they try not to move off the truck that brought them there so the workers prod them with burning pokers...I won't go into detail but watch this to find out more (it's a speech not a video showing it). And I know the first thing you're probably thinking is "oh well that probably just happens in America..it couldn't happen in Ireland!" I thought that too! I know we see the cows and sheep in the fields here and there isn't much factory farming going on - except for chickens and pigs:( - but God knows what happens in the slaughter houses...they still have to be killed and we really don't know how it happens or anything. But I definitely don't even want to wait to find out...I don't want to be part of the killing of animals for food. Full stop!
3. Fruit and veg are underrated..! 
   
   Through discovering veganism I started following lots of vegans on Youtube and Instagram that promote a high-carb, high-fruit diet. There are lots of names for it and lots of different approaches from 80/10/10, raw food diet, high carb low fat, Raw till 4 etc. All basically the same principle: eat as much fruit as you can fit in your belly, low protein/low fat, lots of greens and no calorie restriction! This to me sounded like the best diet ever because fruit has always been my favourite food and also, you can eat as much as you want. 3000 calories? No bother! Just as long as you keep fit and keep oil and salt to a bare minimum you can eat as much as you want! The things people have achieved through eating high amounts of fruit and veg is amazing and I want to be one of them! They are all so fit and healthy! Also the fact that the anti-oxidents in fruit and veg fights the free radicals that lead to cancer also is enough to make me want to live off the stuff!