So you’re a vegan now. Congrats! Or at least, you did #Veganuary successfully for a whole month* and now, giddy on antioxidants and the knowledge that if all else fails you can just eat toast and Marmite, you’re thinking you might carry on Vegan-ing into February like it’s no big thing. Congrats!
But now, stop. If you’re going to embrace veganism long-term without the solidarity of the hashtag, you’re going to need to make a few changes – or else end up bankrupt and bored with only your own farts for company. Take it from me, an expert. Or rather, another person who has been vegan for slightly less than a month and gone, 'this is fine! This is easy! THIS WILL BE MY NEW THING.'
Here are some tips to help you turn Veganuary into VeganYEAR. Which admittedly. isn’t as good of a pun.
*Except New Year’s Day, obviously, and that minor slip-up where you licked the bacon dust off somebody else’s Frazzle.
Get better nut butter
In January, you were so enthused about the whole thing that you made a beeline for the nearest organic shop and spaffed about £82 on every variety of posh nut butter. Nut butter is a big deal in the life of the modern vegan. Unless you’re also allergic to nuts, in which case there’s… I don’t know, tofu paste? Alfafa sprouts? Wanking? Anyway, you spent about £82 to discover the truth, which is that almond butter and cashew butter both taste indistinguishable from peanut butter – and pumpkin seed butter tastes the same except green.
Still, now you’re hooked. But if you’re ever going to stand a chance of carrying your new lifestyle choice on into February and beyond, you’re going to have to upgrade the dinky glass jars and go industrial. You, my herbivorous friend, are going to have to buy one of those huge plastic buckets of organic peanut butter. It’s the only way. Swing it proudly by the handle as you walk back from Whole Foods, store it in the cupboard under the sink because it’s the only place it will fit, and try not to confuse it with the bathroom tile grout.
Spend less in general
In theory, you know you could be a vegan without spending very much at all – just living on bags of dried lentils and tomatoes that you’ve nurtured yourself in a window box and watered with your own wee. But in practice, you needed to cheer yourself up and cheer yourself on during the first few weeks, so along with the £82 nut butters you probably spunked the best part of a month’s wages on coconut oil, date syrup, chia pudding, quinoa chips, almond milk, vanilla almond milk, smoked tofu, sesame tofu, curried tofu and a single avocado that cost £2.65.
Don’t do this anymore. You are not Gwyneth, nor do you have Gwyneth’s overdraft. Instead, scout out a good non-posh local greengrocers or a Lidl for cheaper vegetables, and do an online supermarket shop for the rest. You’d be surprised how many vegan snacks and ingredients a big branch of Tesco will also sell, at a fraction of the price of the fancy organic shops.
You can still go to the fancy organic shops of course, but only to see if they have any free samples out.
Actually try some new recipes
What was your reasoning for doing Veganuary, again? Ah yes: to eat more healthily, more ethically and master some new, creative meat-free recipes. The first point more or less went out of the window the day you discovered Oreos are vegan, the last peaked around January 7th when you invented ‘vegan ribs’ by dipping strips of roast courgette into HP barbecue sauce – and it’s been a series of steadily less exciting things-on-toast ever since.
But woman cannot live on bread alone, so make this the month you actually put some of those beautiful vegan blogs you bookmarked on Pinterest to use. Even just trying one new recipe a week will widen your repertoire, teach you new tricks and reignite your enthusiasm for vegetables. Recipes like this one from Post Punk Kitchen will also make you feel like a magician, as you turn things like cashews, vegetable broth and aubergines into ‘vegan bacon mac and cheeze’ with ease. Sorry, eeze.
Find a restaurant your friends will actually eat at
Veganuary in January makes sense for many reasons, not least because nobody is going out or having fun anyway. It’s much easier to avoid meat and dairy when you’re also avoiding other humans, and everyone else you know is dry, joyless or full of juiced kale. But when February hits, the siren song of Negronis and burritos becomes too loud to ignore, and you’re going to have to adapt to external conditions if your new veganism stands a chance of making it past Pancake Day.
Don’t just assume you’ll be able to rock up at your favourite trendy car park pop-up café and ask for a vegan chilli cheese dog (you’ll be given a dry bread roll and you will deserve it). Likewise try to avoid being the one who vetoes every delicious-sounding suggestion because they won’t have enough options for you.
No, the trick is to scout out a great veggie place and sell it enthusiastically BEFORE your mates suggest anywhere else. Don’t even mention that it’s vegetarian – just talk about the place like it’s the greatest thing since deep-fried pickles and hint that Emma Stone might have been seen there recently, sighing over the scrambled soy bean surprise. Hey pesto! Actually, sorry – you can’t have pesto.
Drink more
You might begrudgingly be able to admit that Dry January is a good idea, what with Damp December having produced enough empty bottles to hold all the candles you will own in a lifetime. But Dry February would be insane.
February is a month made for drinking. It contains Valentine’s Day for a start, an occasion no sensible person should approach sober unless they are literally Maria Von Trapp, plus Lent, Chinese New Year, Ash Wednesday… all the big drinking holidays. It’s still grey and dark, but with enough hint of the promise of spring around the corner to coax you out from under your electric blanket and onto a bar stool with a stiff glass of something in your hand.
So if you’re sticking with the vegan thing, incorporate a few more cocktails. You’ll feel more like part of the party and less like the virtuous smuggo in the corner, and also less likely to notice how much you miss Chicken McNuggets. Beware hangovers though – stock up on crisps, hummus, bourbon biscuits and Irn Bru in advance (all vegan). And some alcohol is actually made using animal-derived products, so if you’re being super-strict then check out the brands you’re safe with here.
Find a better Instagram filter
In the days when you were eating huge, drippy burgers and loaded brisket tacos, you might have got away with nothing more than a touch of Valencia and a slight tweak of the brightness level. But now that you’re eating what’s known in culinary circles as a ‘colossal buttload of vegetables’, it might be time to shift things up a notch.
Amaro is particularly good for helping to distinguish between ‘green’, ‘other green’ and ‘khaki’, while Aden gives a nice retro pinkness to even the most wholesome plate of roughage and is probably the one Linda McCartney would have used. Tilt Shift at your peril, though – that stir-fy is enough of a mess as it is.
If no amount of filtering and colour control can save your delicious heap of a dinner, try snapping all the ingredients before you cook them instead. Line up your peppers and lemongrass like a posh Harvest Festival and let Mother Nature do your boasting for you. Alternatively you could just quit bragging on Instagram… but if the proverbial tree falls in the forest and nobody sees, what the hell was the point of turning it into vegan bark casserole?
Like this? Then you might also be interested in:
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.