What I Eat in a Day: The Vegan Student Edition

So, I'm vegan! It's quite a new development but I had realised that I had been using primarily vegan recipes and as I'm pretty much lactose intolerant, I decided to make the jump to veganism. But we're talking a plant based diet so no vegan cheese or anything like that. Before I launch into the main purpose of this post, the reason I decided to go vegan was primarily for health reasons so I'm not going to be posting anything about animal cruelty and the ethics behind it because it'll just open a whole bag of worms that I don't know enough to talk about! I'm purely vegan when I'm cooking for myself so if I go out or go to a friend's house for dinner, I might eat meat or animal products - just not in my own home.

But as I was saying, veganism is quite a tricky thing to conquer as a student as a lot of base ingredients are quite pricey so I thought I would share the kind of food I eat on a daily basis that don't cost the earth (and are super easy to make).

Breakfast is such an important meal and I often find if I skip brekkie, I find I'm starving by about eleven o'clock and find myself snacking. If I'm at uni, I love almond milk porridge loaded with flaxseeds, chia seeds and berries (I use frozen as they're cheaper - just get them out to thaw the night before). Because I'm also gluten free, I use gluten free oats but normal oats are so cheap they're an essential! But if I have a bit more time in the morning, I love smashed avocado with lemon on sourdough bread and an Alpro soy yoghurt. So filling but so good.

Lunch is always a tricky meal for me as usually I used to reach for a bag of crisps and a ham sandwich of sorts but I've been really into sushi bowls lately. The name makes them sound so much more complicated than they actually are but they're just made up of rice (I prefer brown rice as it will keep you full for longer), chopped up veg or fruit (I tend to go for tomatoes, cucumber, occasionally avocado and spinach) and then a drizzle of tamari (gluten free soy sauce) and then I mix it all together and it's so good! I've been having this almost daily and it's also really great as a packed lunch (sans avocado) as it keeps me going till dinner. I tend to bulk cook brown rice and then leave it in the fridge to make this easy to do on a daily basis.

Snacks are definitely the easiest part of the day. I reach for fruit or carrots and hummus because hummus is incredible. Let's be honest, I've been tempted to spoon it straight from the container.

Dinner as a typical student tends to consist of pasta or frozen meals partially because it's cheaper and far easier than making a meal from scratch so this was probably the trickiest meal to conquer but I think I've just about sorted it. Roasted vegetables will be your new best friend. They take about an hour in the oven at around 200 degrees but they're otherwise so simple! I buy bags of chopped up sweet potato, courgettes, cherry tomatoes, red onions and any other vegetables I have in the fridge. They're really filling because of the sweet potato and so good for you because they're all vegetables! I have this so much because I love it and it's easy to take to work with me in the evenings.

So I hope you've enjoyed my first What I Eat in a Day. Let me know if you'd like more of them and generally what you think!