I’ve been vegetarian for years and years. I stopped drinking milk over 10 years ago. I can hardly stomach an egg. My favourite place to get sweets in London is a vegan bakery. So you would think a suggested diet shift to vegan +fish for health reasons shouldn’t have been too daunting… but the cheese! shock! horror! how would I live without cheese?! Champagne cheese fondue & hot salsa cheese dip are 2 of my signature dishes. I take a cheese board on the terrace very seriously. I’ve been know to accompany the boy to a fancy schmancy meat-tastic restaurant and be thrilled to have just wine & cheese – LOTS of wine & cheese.

But cheese free was the way it was going to have to be, so I did it, and to my surprise it was a lot easier than expected. Looking back now it really strikes me as a bit like an addiction; at first it was so so so difficult, I wanted it all the time, if I saw it or smelled it I was literally drooling. 3 weeks later it was like it was never there.

So now I’m fine, I don’t really even want the cheese any more and the one time I cheated and had some I felt like I was going to throw up and die so I don’t foresee cheating being an issue. For the most part I decided I wanted to experiment with new dishes rather than try to replace bits of the things I used to make regularly. I actually found it to be a bit freeing in terms of creating new and interesting combinations.

But every once in a while I just want that comfort food that I’m used to, which inevitably ends up being cheese based; pizza, lasagne, mac-n-cheese, etc. So for those rare occasions I’ve started experimenting with some vegan home made cheeses.

I finally found a cheese that it versatile, quick to make & melts (kind of). I got the recipe from a blog that I didn’t previously know but will definitely be going back to visit again soon!

 

 

My favourite things about this cheese:

  • you can add various flavours
  • you can pour it directly on for pizza, lasagne, mac-n-cheese
  • you can put it in the fridge to harden & then it shreds!!
  • top tip – put it in the freezer for even easier shredding
  • it melts (kind of) & browns

After months of going without I finally had a vegemite & cheese toastie today! I was a late 20’s convert to vegemite so I’m not really brave enough to go it alone on a plain piece of toast. I had been missing it quite a lot and finally tried it today with the cheese from the fridge that I shredded and then popped it under the grill. YUM! here are a few photos.