Vegan food products D-M
Fish fingers and fishless fishcakes
I've seen the Redwood Foods versions of these in Holland and Barrett, Asda and wholefoods shops but never tried them.
Just because you're feeding a vegetarian or vegan doesn't mean they have to have 'vegetarian' gravy (you know, the thin watery stuff that looks like a dissolved vegetable stock cube). Personally, I'm a fan of nice thick brown gravy, so I get Bisto Onion gravy granules. Ideal for Sunday Dinners everywhere. Bisto have vegan product information on their website, so you can check which of their products are vegan.
Haggis
Yes, you can get vegetarian haggis! The most commonly available brand is made by Macsween, it's suitable for vegans and is also rather tasty.
Honey
Honey is not suitable for vegans as it is an animal product. Maple syrup and agave nectar are common vegan alternatives to honey.
Ice cream
I recently discovered B'Nice ice cream, which is made from rice milk and to me tastes closest to dairy ice cream (and nice dairy ice cream at that!) out of any vegan ice cream I've tried so far, particularly the strawberry and chocolate flavours. It's only sold in wholefoods shops, but well worth having a look for.
Look out for Swedish Glace or Tofutti ice cream in the supermarket. It's worth a trip to a wholefoods shop if you want the full range of flavours, although supermarkets are increasingly stocking the more exotic varieties. Sorbet is an alternative, but check the ingredients to make sure it doesn't contain milk (seriously). Tesco sorbets (raspberry and lemon flavours) are now labelled vegan, although they used to contain milk. Two new Ben and Jerry's sorbets, 'Jamaican me crazy' and 'Mango berry swirl', are suitable for vegans.
Another one to look out for is Sainsbury's fruit burst lollies - they're more like ice cream in texture (rather than rock-hard frozen water) and the mango one tastes like Solero but without the milk. Very nice.
First things first - margarine is not vegan unless it specifically says 'suitable for vegans' on the tub. Yes, even sunflower spread and olive spread and whatever other plant-based spread you care to mention gets milk added to it.
Vegan margarine is available and in general it tastes the same as non-vegan margarine, particularly the sunflower varieties. The main one available is the 'Pure' brand, which is sold in major supermarkets and in Holland and Barrett. Suma also make vegan margarine, this tends to be sold more in independent shops.
Vitalite is dairy-free but not suitable for vegans (it contains animal-derived vitamin D). The manufacturers are currently working on a vegan recipe for the product with the intention of launching vegan-friendly Vitalite in the near future. (Email from manufacturers June 08).
An alternative in some types of baking (pastry, biscuits etc.) is to use blocks of vegetable fat. Some vegan cake recipes use sunflower oil in place of margarine.
Yep, egg-free mayonnaise exists, and it's rather nice. Look out for the Plamil or Mayola brands. Tesco and Asda (and probably other supermarkets) stock it in their special diets section. It's similar but not identical to 'normal' mayonnaise, but no-one can tell the difference in a Waldorf salad anyway.
Meat chunks/pieces
There are various 'fake meat' pieces available, including chicken nuggets, beef strips and chorizo-style chunks, mostly made by Redwood Foods or RealEat. I don't tend to use these myself so I'm not able to give much more information, other than that they exist!
Alternatively, depending on your recipe you could use tofu or seitan. These are traditional ingredients which are not designed to imitate meat but can sometimes be used in place of it in recipes. Tofu is made from soya beans and comes in small blocks, which you can cut into chunks, marinate and use in various recipes such as Thai curries, Chinese dishes and pasta sauces. Seitan is made from wheat gluten and comes in chunks. It works particularly well in place of chopped chicken breast.
Meat slices (ham, chicken, pepperoni, etc.)
Redwood Foods make a variety of fake meat slices, including ham, pepperoni, chicken, turkey and beef styles. They also do sage and onion slices that aren't meant to imitate meat. Occasionally sold in supermarkets (I've seen a few in Morrison's), Holland and Barrett also have a good range. Useful in sandwiches and as pizza toppings, such as on ham and pineapple or spicy pepperoni and black olive pizzas.
Minced meat
We have moved on since the days when all you could get was dried stuff in bags from wholefoods shops... I like RealEat vegemince, frozen soya mince that seems to have made it into at least Tesco's freezer. Morrison's also do an own-brand vegan version. I've got my omnivore parents making chilli con (sin?) carne out of this stuff and they reckon it tastes no different to the meat version. You can also get dried TVP mince (textured vegetable protein) but I find it's easier to get a better result from frozen mince.
Mincemeat
As in the stuff you put in mince pies. Mincemeat tends to contain vegetable suet rather than animal suet these days, and so some brands are vegan. Read the labels. Use vegetable fat or vegan margarine in the pastry and your mince pies will be completely vegan-friendly. Most shop-bought mince pies seem to contain milk or egg.