Monday, March 17, 2008

Vegan Fast Food

Well, it's finals time for me and Marc, as well as thousands of others. Who has time to cook? So I thought I'd share some suggestions for quick and easy snacks and mini-meals.

Tonight Marc made us a tasty soup, using just vegetable bouillon, a few bow-tie pasta pieces, one sliced carrot, thyme, salt and pepper to taste. It was easy, but better than from a can! If you don't even have time for that, Health Valley makes a few vegan vegetable soups that are good and readily available. Read the ingredients carefully though; not every flavor is vegan.

Rice cakes are great for all sorts of toppings, especially if you try to avoid bread like me. I like them with Vegenaise and any of Tofurkey's sliced deli "meats" (all of which are vegan) or with tomato sauce and Tofutti mozzarella cheese slices (I put these in the broiler for about 30-60 seconds and voila! Pizza rice cake). Tofutti's cheese slices are great; not only are they one of the few "non-dairy" cheeses that are actually vegan (many contain casein or whey), but they melt like real cheese and taste realistic too. If you've got a sweet tooth, they're also good with peanut butter and jelly (I like almond or cashew butter, and fruit preserves with no added sugar). They're also good with hummus and sliced cucumbers.

Odwalla bars are portable and vegan, as well as Luna bars and Clif bars (check the ingredients, but I believe all varieties of each of those brands are vegan). Trail mixes are good too, and many of the kind that come with semi-sweet or dark chocolate chips are vegan (but as always, read the ingredients). Watch out for carob chips; in my experience they are usually NOT vegan.

On another note, for those of you who are veg-curious or who have friends who are veg-curious, this Thursday, March 20th is Meatout day. Why not invite your non-veg friends over for dinner (as well as your veg friends of course) and show them how we do it? Everyone can commit to one day of a meat-free lifestyle.

Well, I must get back to my school work, but good luck on your finals, and don't forget to eat!

3 comments:

Lori said...

I was wonderig which brand of vegetable boullion you use? And is it very salty?

Macoe said...

Hi Lori - just went to look in our cabinet, and we have vegetable bouillon from "The Organic Gourmet." It is marked as vegan and gluten free. The first ingredient is sea salt, so I suggest using a little more water than they recommend on the package if you find it too salty.

This isn't the only brand we use, although I can't recall the others we've tried right now. Do not buy Knorr "vegetarian vegetable" bouillon as it contains gelatin! There's a great article here that talks about sodium content: http://www.vrg.org/journal/vj99jan/99janbroth.htm

It mentions that the Organic Gourmet does have a low sodium version. Also, if anyone knows of a vegan bouillon that does not contain nutritional yeast, I would love to know!

Lori said...

Thanks Macoe.