A couple of months ago, I went Vegan for two weeks. This eye-opening experience showed me how the world could change, for the better, if we all decided to stop eating meat, dairy and eggs as much to help our planet. Here is an account on that two-week experience that has changed my lifeforever.
I started on a Wednesday, and for those first three days, I had school. Although I had been vegetarian for one month, by then I didn’t just have meat in my face all the time, I also had cheese, egg and milk was there as well. For dinner on Wednesday, I had my Surrey Youth Cabinet meeting, and I kindly got a Vegan Pizza (with no cheese) and it was great! On Thursday, I just had a microwave meal from Tesco and, on Friday, I had a nice couscous wrap from Tesco. Unfortunately, on Wednesday, I had my first encounter with Vegan cheese - melted on toast. It tasted like rubber and cardboard that was blended together.
After those three agonizing days, it was finally the weekend! I was going away over the next week to see my Grandparents in Southport. I had some fresh curry on Saturday and Quorn (Vegan) nuggets on Sunday, which was all amazing.
After an overnight long journey with a 1-Year-Old, and a Greggs vegan sausage roll for breakfast later, we had finally arrived. I only had 8 No-Zerella sticks for lunch and a lovely curry for dinner. The next day, I had plain toast for breakfast and went to Prezzo for lunch. The food was great and the staff were friendly too, although they didn’t have a separate vegan menu to allergens and intolerances, so there were many logos on all the things on the menu and was confusing. I had pasta and tomato sauce, and some tomato hummus and pitta bread. This was all so good and, since, I went to my local Prezzo and had it again.
After, we went back to my grandparent’s house and I had a Vegan Magnum, which was great and tasted real. Vegan ice-cream tastes just like normal ice-cream, apart from the fact that it is better! For dinner that night, I had vegan sausage burgers with fresh tomatoes and the buns were actually pitta bread!
The next day, I tried cauliflower hash browns for breakfast, which were great! For lunch, I had a Vegan Sausage Roll (again!) and for dinner, I had a Curry (i have had too many by now) and went back home. Until Friday, I mostly just had toast with vegan spread, and pasta and rice. On Friday morning, I went on Scout camp with my group. At first, I had a stir-fry for dinner and I had apples and vegan jelly for pudding. The next morning, I had a cooked Vegan breakfast and did some activities and was very cold, so some good food was much needed! Good thing is that they had pasta to hand. I had so many bowls I couldn’t even count. 1 session of crawling through mud (literally) later and it was dinner. You know I said vegan cheese was terrible earlier? Well, lucky me had vegan pizza and I couldn’t even look at the vibrant orange, gooey mess that was that pizza. Thankfully, although they hadn’t prepared for this, I was blessed to have a banana smoothie, ready salted crisps, an apple, and a banana for my dinner. Did I mention it was one of the scout’s birthdays? They were lucky enough to have chocolate cake, which I had waved around in my face at least 1000 times.
We had the same breakfast and lunch the next day and then we were off. We got back at about 7 PM and I was lucky enough to have a mum who must have known how much I missed food as she came and brought me a lovely pasta pot, which was gone in one motion.
For the next 3 days, I had vegan toast for breakfast, a wrap with veg in for lunch and some pasta or a fresh meal for dinner.
For the first meal, on that Thursday morning, I had the thing I missed the most - Custard Creams.
Thank you for reading, Dylan!