Welcome to Cooking for Vegans!
This site is a guide to how to provide vegan-friendly food for various occasions. It is primarily aimed at non-vegans looking for vegan recipes or help with vegan cooking, for example to provide a meal for a vegan visitor, but new vegans and anyone thinking of becoming vegan or cutting down on animal products may also find it helpful.
This site contains information about:
- vegan recipes - everyday meals, recipes for special occasions, easy vegan recipes, quick vegan meals, creative recipes, dairy- and egg-free baking, vegan buffet and party food, barbecue and picnic ideas
- food shopping and vegan food products - how to read the labels, vegan alternative versions of non-vegan products, products that look vegan but aren't, non-vegan ingredients to avoid
- how to veganise meals - Sunday lunch, Christmas dinner, how to cook for vegans, vegetarians and omnivores at the same time
- what on earth you could cook for your vegan niece/friend/sister's boyfriend who's coming over for dinner next week...
What's a vegan?
Vegans are people who don't eat any foods which are derived from animals. As major ingredients go, this means meat, fish, eggs, milk and honey, and any products made from these, such as cheese. They do not eat by-products or additives that are animal-derived, such as gelatine (made from animal bones and tissues), whey or lactose (both from milk). Foods with animal ingredients added as 'extras' are also unsuitable for vegans, such as vegetable soup made with chicken stock or mashed potatoes with margarine or butter added. Vegans also tend to avoid non-food animal products, such as leather clothing.
By comparison, vegetarians do not eat meat or fish (or their by-products) but they usually do eat milk and eggs. If you are providing food for a guest and are not sure what they eat or don't eat - ask them beforehand! They will be pleased that you are making the effort for them.
Once you've learned a few basic points, providing vegan-friendly food is not difficult. It's often colourful, tasty and varied, and you might find some new and exciting ideas for your cooking repertoire.
Latest news
18th October 2008: More bits and pieces, a few more photos and recipes. Updates to the Christmas dinner page, seeing as it'll soon be time to start thinking about it (eek)!
26th August 2008: Bits and bobs, but quite a lot of them. Re-organisation and improvement of the meals and main dishes page (again), more photos added to recipe pages, a few more recipes added, food shopping index page made more user-friendly, further info page revised and updated.
31st July 2008: Photos! I've finally got round to taking photos and adding them to recipe pages and putting some on the front page. Buying a new camera helps. Bear in mind that I'm not a photographer and I don't do clever things with Photoshop, so the photos that are next to the recipes are what it actually looked like in my kitchen and not the result of some clever food styling like you get in recipe books...
29th July 2008: More recipes added to the meals
and main dishes and the starters,
side dishes and sauces sections. Recipes in both sections have been
categorised to make them easier to browse.