Ideas?-Leftover dairy and eggs & Giving up cheese!

[Rory17]

Hello ,
I am an ex-vegan veggie who wants to go back to vegan. However, there are some problems...
I love cheese. Yes, I eat vegan cheese, but of course it’s not quite the same as (dairy) vintage cheddar or a Babybel. One of the main issues is that there simply aren’t vegan alternatives to certain cheeses like goats’ cheese and halloumi commercially made, readily available in all of the grocery stores. I know there’s the Violife Mediterranean-style cheese, but I haven’t found it yet in the grocery stores I’ve looked in. Also, goat’s cheese is a favourite of mine and it’s a pain that none of the big, commercial vegan cheese brands (Violife, Sheese). Goats’ cheese is popular with vegetarians, so Violife and Sheese should take note!
Also, I still have dairy products (what remains of a bottle of milk (I like milk), vintage cheddar, what remains of a packet of goats’ cheese, possibly some slices of cheese) and some eggs. My family still eat meat, eggs, dairy and fish, etc, but is there anything else I could do with it?
I’m passionately against animal cruelty (including socially-accepted forms like killing bugs intentionally, eating meat, fishing and hunting) and for animal rights. When I see or hear of someone killing bugs intentionally, hunting, fishing, killing animals like rats and bugs as “p***s” (I don’t like using the p word, or the v word, for any animals, they all have a right to live), or wearing fur, buying leather or UGGs, I can get very anxious and upset (I was diagnosed with Asperger’s and I’m very prone to anxiety).
Please help.
Thanks .

 

[PTree15]

Hi Rory, the thing that finally got me off cheese (I was a bona fide cheese-aholic!), was learning about the immense cruelty that goes into producing cheese, milk and eggs. I had been a vegetarian for years before this acquisition of knowledge. It turned my stomach to think about what the animals endured just so I could appease by tastebuds. Maybe you could just give what's left of your eggs and dairy to your family or friends who do consume these things.

 

[silva]

Let your family eat it!
The way to break from eating certain foods is --- stop. Sure it's easier said than done, but it's doable. If you were diagnosed with some thing and told that a certain food was the trigger, you'd probably stop eating it, and eventually forget about it. I relate my cheese addiction to smoking cigarettes. It took my so long to stop for the last time- I think for about 5 years I'd quit, then out of nowhere the desire would hit me and I'd start back up, only to quit again.But I did quit, because it was that important to me, and I never stopped telling myself that I would stop.

When I fostered a mama cat that gave birth to 6 babies was when I really woke up to what dairy is, and meant to be. It's baby food, it's mother and child bonding, it's a product of birth. I'd watch them nurse and it hit home so hard that it was no different for any other mammal on earth. Just thinking of taking those babies away and hooking that mother to a machine to sell their milk was just so sad, so wrong. I carried a picture of a cow and calf with me. One day I took it out and left it standing on the dairy milk shelf

You'll forget what cheese tastes like one day. My last time was when I had Daiya cheddar block and loved it so much, I took a taste of my sons cheddar cheese to compare.The Daiya tasted better. I made a cultured cheese with soy yogurt and one with a probiotic, and cashews that was delicious. I don't know and don't care if they taste like dairy, it doesn't matter--they are very good!

 

[poivron]

Hello ,
I am an ex-vegan veggie who wants to go back to vegan. However, there are some problems...
I love cheese. Yes, I eat vegan cheese, but of course it’s not quite the same as (dairy) vintage cheddar or a Babybel. One of the main issues is that there simply aren’t vegan alternatives to certain cheeses like goats’ cheese and halloumi commercially made, readily available in all of the grocery stores. I know there’s the Violife Mediterranean-style cheese, but I haven’t found it yet in the grocery stores I’ve looked in. Also, goat’s cheese is a favourite of mine and it’s a pain that none of the big, commercial vegan cheese brands (Violife, Sheese). Goats’ cheese is popular with vegetarians, so Violife and Sheese should take note!
Also, I still have dairy products (what remains of a bottle of milk (I like milk), vintage cheddar, what remains of a packet of goats’ cheese, possibly some slices of cheese) and some eggs. My family still eat meat, eggs, dairy and fish, etc, but is there anything else I could do with it?
I’m passionately against animal cruelty (including socially-accepted forms like killing bugs intentionally, eating meat, fishing and hunting) and for animal rights. When I see or hear of someone killing bugs intentionally, hunting, fishing, killing animals like rats and bugs as “p***s” (I don’t like using the p word, or the v word, for any animals, they all have a right to live), or wearing fur, buying leather or UGGs, I can get very anxious and upset (I was diagnosed with Asperger’s and I’m very prone to anxiety).
Please help.
Thanks ☺.

The damage has already been done, so you might as well eat what's in your fridge. That's the least wasteful thing you can do. After all, you bought it, and you were eating it until a few days ago. Remember that this is not about you; it's about minimizing harm to animals. When my husband and I decided to go vegan, we finished what was in the fridge and replaced it with vegan foods as it ran out. This also provided a bit of a transition, so that we could take a few days to do some research, buy some cookbooks, and figure out what we could eat every day as new vegans. (In the end, there was one package of meat in the freezer, which I had to throw out because by the time we got to that, we couldn't contemplate eating animal flesh any more.)

So I would say, eat what's in your fridge, and if you can't stand eating it, just throw it out. I wouldn't give it to someone else. It's better to give people healthy foods rather than stuff that will clog their arteries.

As someone who only succeeded in being vegan on my second attempt, I would also say that it's important not to be extreme about veganism. Yes, it feels good to imagine that one is all pure and morally superior, but it's not sustainable, and it's not mentally healthy. Veganism is not about vegans and how moral we are; it's about the animals. The best advice I can give you is to go easy on yourself, take it one day at a time, and focus on the animals rather than on yourself. In my experience, the natural tendency of a vegan is to become more strictly vegan over time. So if you have to eat cheese for a while until you're able to stop completely, that's better than being a perfect vegan for four months and then going back to eating animal products, as I did the first time I tried to go vegan.

When you completely stop eating animal products, your tastes will change. (The cells that make up our tastebuds are replaced every ten days or so.) Vegan cheese may not taste very good now, but it will taste better as your taste buds replace themselves. In fact, if you try to think about it objectively, cheese doesn't actually taste good; it's greasy, overly salty, and bitter. Even vegan cheeses are far from ideal, since most of them contain a lot of fat (though they are much healthier than cheese made from animals' bodily secretions). Because of health issues, I have to be on a very low-fat diet now, so I don't eat any sort of processed cheese. The interesting thing is that I don't even miss it. Good luck!

 

[Danielle]

Could stop cold turkey and give it to non vegans, that’s what I liked to do. So you don’t procrastinate and take it serious.

 

[Urban Gardener]

Could stop cold turkey and give it to non vegans, that’s what I liked to do. So you don’t procrastinate and take it serious.

I'm with Danielle on this. I would try to give it away.

 

[Jamie in Chile]

If you give it away the person will quite likely buy less other dairy as a result.

Violife is good when you can find it. For these specific products order online or look online which shops have it before you go out.

A number of people, not everyone, have reported that cheese cravings go away over time.

Good luck!

 

[Sproutskies]

Definitely can relate as someone who used to work in restaurants and sampled different kinds of cheese's. Remember looking at a study showing casein and addicting compounds that creates a dependency comparable to hard drugs. Just tried Cashew cultured cheese for the first time this week and feel extremely satisfied. Have you found any dedicated vegan markets? Maybe it's just the US but it seems like you can find one in every major city. Plus many artisan vegan cheese makers that ship nationwide.

 

[Lou]

 

[Lou]

Award-Winning Vegan Cheese Brand Expanding Operations To Meet 'Huge Demand'

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www.plantbasednews.org