Dysfunctional Planner

On Sunday we had family over one of which is vegan we thought it would be fun to try some bbq foods. Even though I am not Vegan I have no issue with cutting down on my meat consumption and trying out new recipes but I have to admit, preparing for a vegan bbq wasn’t easy. As someone who just buys food I like the look of I prefer to buy organic and we don’t buy a lot of prepared food as I cook from scratch. I had to really look at ingredients and food information.

I did an online shop as I thought it would be easier but searching for vegan essentials was tricky! And Tesco’s website didn’t make it any easier. In the end I had to google items then find them on Tesco’s. I really think they need to come up with a better system to make it easier for people to find what they need.

What we ate

• Caesar salad
• Baked potatoes
• Spicy bean burgers
• Smoked cabbage
• veggie kebabs
• Corn on the cob
• Rolls

We did by some spicy bean burgers as they are a firm favourite with us but we wanted to try some other bits too, Gavin smoked a whole cabbage, he popped margarine and herbs in the heart of it, covered it in foil and baked it in the bbq for two hours, it was so yummy he will definitely be baking it again.

He also did his smoked baked potatoes with onion but he swapped out the butter for margarine which were so yummy.

I bought brioche buns thinking all bread is vegan when brioche is definitely not! So we swapped them out for some nice malted ones instead.

The Caesar salad was tricky because I had to switch out a few bits. I bought a plant based dressing from Tesco, violife mature cheese to make the croutons and margarine instead of the butter. I couldn’t fine a small fresh loaf so I just ended up using the vegan bread we had so it was a bit thin for croutons but my brother loved them. The cheese had flavour but I should have tried the Parmesan for a fuller flavour.

The nice thing about baking and making in the bbq is that everything is wrapped up so nothing goes cold and you can eat when you are ready to.

In summary the food was delicious, Gavin also smoked some meat for the non vegans to enjoy but we actually loved all the food. Swapping butter for margarine was an easy fix and I could have done a couscous salad and a pasta to fill up the menu but for four of us there was plenty.

I don’t know why supermarkets don’t make it easier for vegans to shop. Especially if you are beginning. I think there need to be some sort of simple colour coding that all supermarkets use to simplify identification.

A green V for fully vegan and Orange V for when there may be a trace ( if it’s made in the same factory etc and a yellow V for vegetarian. Is that so hard? A universal system when I can glance at a packet and know my sister inlaw can eat it?

Have you had a good vegan bbq?