Meatless Monday Review

While working on re-capping our Hawaiian vacation for you, I realized that it’s been a while since I’ve done a re-cap on vegan food alternatives that I use and love. Since it’s “Meatless Monday”, I thought I’d post one today and also link back to some older posts I’ve done.

While I do know that initially it can be a lot of fun to find vegan items that taste similar (and I think better) than their meat versions, I’d like to emphasize placing importance on eating “whole” foods first. Whole fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds and grains. I, personally can always tell that I feel better when I stick to this type of diet.

Here are some of the Vegan Food Alternatives I’ve shared in the past and still use today:

Milk Alternatives:

• almond milk – my personal favorite especially for smoothies!
• coconut milk
• hazelnut milk
• rice milk
• soy milk

To replace buttermilk in a recipe use 1 cup soymilk plus 1 tablespoon of vinegar.

Yogurt Substitutes:

There are so many soy yogurts available in the grocery store nowadays. I’m happy to say I’ve even seen coconut milk yogurts too. Just look around and I’m sure you’ll see some.

In some recipes, you can also substitute applesauce although substituting the entire amount may change the texture of what you’re baking. If you use applesauce, you might also want to decrease the amount of sweetener in your recipe too.

To use tofu as a replacement puree medium firm silken tofu and use it cup-for-cup for dairy yogurt.

Sour Cream Alternatives:

Again, there seem to be many brands available in the store including: Sour Cream Alternative by Galaxy Nutritional Foods, Moonomor Soy Sour Cream, and Better Than Sour Cream Sour Supreme (my favorite).

Egg Replacers:

Here are some options I’ve tried:

• 1/4 cup (2 ounces) soft tofu blended with the liquid ingredients of the recipe, or
• 1 small banana, mashed, or
• 1/4 cup applesauce, or
• 2 tablespoons cornstarch or arrowroot starch, or Ener-G Egg Replacer found in health food stores.

Cheese Alternatives:

• Soy and rice cheese are readily available in health food stores, Trader Joe’s stores and I’ve even seen them in many local grocery stores. (Be aware that many soy cheeses contain casein, which is a dairy product.) The Soy-Sation shredded 3 cheese blend from Trader Joe’s is what I use often in panninis, tacos and burritos.

• Crumbled tofu can be substituted for cottage cheese or ricotta cheese in lasagna and similar dishes.

• Several brands of nondairy cream cheese are available in some supermarkets and kosher stores. My favorite brand is Tofutti.
• For “meltable” cheese, I love Daiya “cheese” and use it in many recipes like vegan Mac & Cheese.

For a complete list of recipes I’ve posted on Meatless Monday and a list of vegan products I use, I’ve created these links to help you search my site:

Lita’s Meatless Mondays Recipe List

Lita’s Loves – (aka vegan products I use and love)

Have any favorites I’ve missed or haven’t tried? I’d love to hear about them.

If you’ve found any vegan blogs you love following, please share them with me, too. I’m constantly finding new ones I just love. I’ll create a list to share them with you soon.

Happy Monday,
~ Lita