Vegan grocery shopping: it's an adventure

I find grocery shopping stressful enough, without having to constantly examine labels and scrutinize the content of what it is I am buying.  What follows is an account of purchasing some foods for some vegan recipes, and what common problems I encountered.

When it comes to vegan recipes there are some common and simple choices you can make.  Sticking to the produce aisle seems simple enough, selecting fresh fruits and vegetables is a no-brainer; but, we can't live on salads and bananas all the time.  As someone that used to eat meat, and a lot of it, I'm not afraid to admit I was craving some suitable meat-like substitutes.  First on the list: vegan sausage.  I have a meat grinder, and I've made my own sausage for some time, so if I could find a decent vegan sausage, I know I would be very happy.

There are a number of vegan sausages out there, but the one that seemed the best to me was a "seitan" like product made from wheat gluten, also referred to as vital wheat gluten.  Where do you find wheat gluten, you may ask?  That's an excellent question, and that's where this shopping adventure begins.  Let's start at the Mecca of healthy food shopping the world over: Whole Foods.  Firstly, the closest one to me is about 2 cities over, or about a 30-minute drive.  Not too far, all things considered, but not really a place where you can just pop into on your way home from work when you realize you're short on soymilk.  Even at that, a number of the unusual ingredients that you can find at Whole Foods are available from a product line known as Bob's Red Mill. 

Bob's Red Mill products are actually commonly available at many of the non-specialty grocers in my area, such as Metro and Fortinos, but be warned, they may only carry a small selection of the Bob's Red Mill line.  Vital wheat gluten is one of those hit or miss products, some stores may or may not carry it.  Eventually I found some in bulk at a specialty health food store, but in retrospect I may have been able to find it some place more convenient.

To put this in perspective, another product that I was searching for is something called textured vegetable protein or T.V.P. As it turns out, this product was available at all four of the grocery stores I visited, of which three were all the Bob's Red Mill brand, so in this case the travel to Whole Foods was totally unnecessary.

My quest, admittedly, was to make my favorite breakfast: French toast, and breakfast sausage.  Next on the list is French toast, or as the cookbook my girlfriend had purchased, lovingly, calls it: "Fronch Toast".  The strange items on the list include soy creamer and chickpea flour.  Soy creamer was found, without much trouble, at Whole Foods, but I didn't see it anywhere else.  Chickpea flour is a common ingredient in middle-eastern and Indian cuisine, and thanks to the strong Indian community in my neighborhood it's easy to find at all the major grocers.  Depending on where you live, you may not find it as easily.

The last component to my breakfast is a tall, cold glass or milk-alternative.  There's a lot to chose from: soymilk, almond milk, rice milk, and so on.  My personal favorite, as introduced to me by my girlfriend, is the plain soymilk found at Asian grocery stores, such as T&T and Oceans (hey they don't have a website).  I prefer the plain, unsweetened kind; over the gross, sugary, vanilla flavored stuff you find at most supermarkets.

This whole thing is a learning process, the more I eat vegan, and the more I get comfortable with the recipes the more I will have a shopping routine nailed down.  As it is, I've decided it's probably not worth the drive all the way out to Whole Foods, as I'm pretty sure I can find what I need closer to home.

Finally, I'd like to mention my friend Lindzi's blog, in one of her recent entries she discusses while she feels she may need to make a move to a vegetarian diet.  She's said she finds the sight of dead and dying animals so shocking that it's difficult for her to eat meat.  Check it out, you can find it here.

Join me next time when I cook some of the recipes I've learned, finally get to vegan junk food, and I introduce my ongoing segment: Will My Dog Eat It?