Cheating, and eating like a pig - Vegan Food

Reassuringly, many of the things I already liked are in fact vegan. For instance, chocolate. No, not the milky, fudgy crap you find in dairy-milk bars. I mean proper, bitter stuff, that releases a thousand flavours of various depths as it melts in your mouth. I like to have it with black coffee and fresh oranges.

You know what else is vegan? Crisps. Most crisps, even bacon-flavoured ones, are vegan. Hot chips are vegan. Thank god the mysterious brown stuff you only get in Scottish chippies, only known as ‘sauce’ is vegan.

Jam doughnuts from the co-op are vegan.

You might be sensing a theme by now, which is that my particular brand of veganism is not necessarily about good health. For me, it’s only about the squeamish feeling that eating bits of animals is a bit icky, as well as being fundamentally unkind.

It turns out it’s as easy to eat total crap from this end of the dietary spectrum, and just as well, or I might have run off to eat an entire cow by now.

It’s also remarkably easy to use takeaway leftovers to make huge, beautiful meals at home. Just remember to chuck in some spinach or seaweed.

LEFTOVER DEEP FRIED TOFU WITH NOODLES OR RICE

1.       Order deep fried tofu from Ricebox. It comes in a proper Chinese-style paper box and is hot fluffy golden nuggets of total badness mixed with spring onions and garlic.

2.       Chop up some ginger and capsicum and stir fry it with a bit of oil. Add some beansprouts, chopped water chestnuts or whatever you like.

3.       Boil up some noodles or rice. I prefer noodles because they’re more fun.

4.       Add the tofu to the ginger/veggies mix, and while piping hot, throw in the noodles and continue to stir-fry for a minute or so, until thoroughly mixed and coated. Add a splash of soy sauce and stir in some very fresh young spinach till just wilted.

5.       YUMBO! You now have a gigantic pile of noodles which, while not exactly healthy, are full of flavour. And you remembered to add spinach. Good.