Favorite vegan substitutes
 

Ok, I'm thinking of doing the vegan thing again. Tell me what you you eat that satisfies your craving for what you miss the most. I love, love, love yogurt. That's going to be a tough one, because the very little experience I have with soy yogurt has not been tasty!

What's your favorite vegan yogurt, cheese, and milk substitute?

Yogurt - I'd say wildwood soy yogurt is my favorite. It is plain and you can add berries or whatever else you want to it.

Cheese - Now this is hard and determines your intention. If you want a quesadilla, hands down daiya is it but it is limited right now. If you want something to go with crackers and 'aged', Dr Cow is great but expensive. I've heard good things about sheese and cheezly. Having said that, a lot of people enjoy avocado in place of where you would eat cheese as it provides similar qualities.

Milk substitute - I like almond milk but I kind of mix it up. Coconut milk (from So delicious) is the closest thing I've ever had to regular milk.

Oh, Daiya looks good! I don't think I've even seen it around here. Did you by chance have any in Asheville? Surely I can find it there. I've been doing almond milk, but there's something missing. I'll try the coconut milk!

I use rice milk for everything.

My health food stores have a limited choice of "cheese" products, but the best out of the bunch are the Follow Your Heart cheeses. The mozzarella is the best in my opinion. I make most of my cheeses from the Joanne Stepaniak cookbooks. I also like to use avocado for sandwiches.

I'm not a big fan of yogurt, but I've tried the Silk brand a few times and it's pretty good.

I would also say that Vegetarian Times had an article a couple months ago about making your own cheese and I've made my own ricotta, pesto, parmesean, 'cheeze' sauce, mac n 'cheeze', etc from various recipes but I haven't seen a good recipe to make your own melty melty cheddar type cheese.

Daiya distribution is fairly limited right now but I know they are going to expand (hopefully). So I don't think Asheville has it yet.

I saved that article :D I really want to try that, as I haven't developed a taste for nutritional yeast.

I think it's Pangea that has Daiya online and available for shipping?

I really like Trader Joe's soy yogurt if you have that available?

Julie - About a year and a half in and I'm just now starting to actually like nutritional yeast and not just tolerate it for some vitamins ;).

Oh and YEEEEAAA!!!!! to Jennifer for going vegan!

Pangea is where I buy Daiya locally but yeah you can order it online as well but I have never ordered anything perishable online.

Personally, I only like plain yogurt and I think Trader Joe's is flavored?

Coconut milk yogurt is pretty good too but I also only buy the big tubs of yogurt and I've only seen coconut milk yogurt in the small containers.

I love Alpro soya yoghurt, not sure if you can get it though as I am in England

On another forum several people have ordered perishables from Pangea with no problems, with and w/o the insulated packs. Me, I'm too cheap ;).

The TJs I live near only has strawberry and peach stocked normally. I don't like plain so it works out for me! When I do need plain for a recipe I normally get the coconut milk.


I love how the UK calls it soya :). We need to do that here!

The plain soy yogurt is good and cheap and you can dress it up with fresh fruit, fruit juices or pulp.
My favorite is watermelon flavoured. My mom likes teh nutmeg cinammon with baked apple.

the only yogurt i have available here is silk and some other brand but the silk is so much better! i havent tried the trader joes brand but i like the silk brand, and vitasoy plain is really good for soymilk, i like it better then 8 continent and silk. i cant find plain soymilk here where do you get it borntobefine?????? id love to have it i love indian food and that is the main staple! lol. the tofutti ice cream, cream cheese, and sour cream is really great...not that you need to be eating it but every once and a blue moon right, trader joes or a health food store will probably have the best foods for you to eat i mean meat substitute wise, they have a lot more flavors to choose from then traditional grocery stores. well good luck and i hope it happens!!! also there is a site i seen on here its foodfightergrocery. try that it can ship to you! how nice is that!

Such a cool thing to try, making dairy-free "cheese"!

I found this online:
http://www.vegetariantimes.com/recipes/10953?section= (I didn't find any other VT recipes available to non-subscribers)

Really interesting to try... if anyone makes this, please post about it :thanks:

I'm intrigued by making dairy free cheese now that I saw that recipe, since it's got pine nuts in it. But I've made a pine nut "cream" sauce for soup that was wonderful, and the only mac & cheese I eat now is VegNews' cashew and veg sauce.

Have any of you made any of the cheese yet?

Thanks for the feedback! I haven't tried the coconut milk yogurt yet, but would like to. It's so expensive, and I'm afraid I'll love it. :lol:

I haven't tried coconut milk yogurt, but I had the coconut milk ice cream. You may be right to be afraid to try it :D

I saw the coconut milk yogurt at a decent price at Whole Foods but I went to Safeway the other day and it was 2.50 per small container! yikes!

I have a Trader Joe real close, but Wholefoods is unfortunately almost 15 miles away. There is another health foods store I should check out though.

I found the Coconut yogurt at my WF for $1.99 per container. I know it's totally expensive, but I figure I'll pay extra to get live cultures without hormones (or soy)! And I'm addicted to their Coconut milk and ice creams! The So Delicious line is amazing! :D

A few must haves for me is agave nectar and hazelnut milk.

Hey Gals,
I have just gotten through day #1 of trying to be vegan! I had So Good soy icecream (probably not my best diet choice, but i watered it down with soy milk!) I had two veggie burgers for dinner and some Organic rasin bran for breakfast!

My big issue is that the weekend is right around the corner and I LOVE BACON & CHEESE on everything! I've certainly cut back on both....but I was wondering if there were any good faux meat/dairy substitutes? (I really do not like tofu!) i know I have to stick to my promise though! I signed a 30 day Veggie thing on go veg dot com

Thanks :D

My advice would be to avoid the vegan cheese substitutes. I think they are ok if you haven't had cheese in a long time, but if you had cheese recently, I think you'd be fairly disappointed.

Lightlife has a bacon like product called Smart Bacon which is pretty good. You could also try to make 'tempeh bacon' which has a texture nothing like bacon but you flavor it and it is pretty good.

What do you all think about the soy controversy? I've been reading internet articles about it being toxic, anti-nutrient and shouldn't be eaten unless fermented - as in tempeh. I was eating soy burgers and tofu pretty regularly but I think I'll stick to more unprocessed foods from now on.

Have any of you read these articles?

sunshine - there are always 2 sides to every argument. It is odd because a lot of the anti-soy sentiment initiated from pro-dairy sources. Of course the dairy/farming industry heavily relies on soy itself to feed cattle and other farm animals.

Soy is actually a good thing, edamame, tofu, tempeh, etc, etc and there are a lot of benefits to soy. One thing I'd say though is that you should diversify your diet. I eat tempeh and tofu a couple times per week but I rarely eat soy burgers.

I like earth balance vegan butter & follow your heart veganaise. I tried some vegan cheese on a pizza today and it was actually pretty good...so we'll see if it makes it to my list of yummy.