It’s been a while since I’ve updated The Vegan Diaries but if I’m honest, I’ve been too busy trying to eat new food and I’ve gotten distracted! But I am back, going vegan isn’t about making life difficult or buying expensive and special vegan food – this is totally unnecessary guys. Some of my favourite foods were vegan all along. Here’s my top 5 accidentally vegan products.

Tyrrells

Firstly and most importantly, these are my favourite crisps of all time and GOOD NEWS some of the flavours are vegan! Hurrah right? The Sweet Chilli & Red Pepper flavour, which makes my stomach flip with joy, are gluten free and suitable for vegans. This is actually great news, I can’t tell you how many hours I’ve spent stomping around supermarkets, looking at fancy crisps (I mean I get sick of eating salted crisps) and finding packet after packet containing wheat or milk, WHY? Fear not though people, Tyrells saved the day.

Image source: Tyrrells Crisps

Thatcher’s Cider

Ok, so it broke my heart when I received a reply from Addlestone’s to say that unfortunately their cider isn’t vegan. I can’t lie, I panicked. Is all cider contaminated with animal products? What is even in cider? Why isn’t it just apples? However, once I calmed the hell down I took to google and there are so many people with lists of safe booze (thank goodness) and I found that Thatcher’s cider is vegan – yay! I’m a cider purist. I was born and bred in Somerset and cider is from Somerset, not Sweden… It’s also made from apples, NOT KIWI AND STRAWBERRY and if I’m in your bar and ask you “What ciders do you have?” and you don’t have an apple cider, please have a good gin handy. You can take the girl out of Somerset but you can’t take the cider away from her… or something like that. I encourage you to go have a read of the about Thatcher’s cider it is adorable, they try to minimise their impact on the environment, they try to give back to their local community and have open days at their farm. They embody everything that I love about the west country, yes yes I’m a giant hippy, get over it. Grab a bottle and support a truly lovely company.

Image source: Thatcher’s cider

Peanut butter

This is pretty obvious but it is the one thing that I ALWAYS have in my cupboard (and if I’m being honest, I usually have a jar on my on desk at work). It’s tasty on toast, brilliant in baking and super on a spoon (what? You don’t eat it off a spoon?). My favourite peanut butter has to be Meridian peanut butter, in fact they are my favourite company for all nut butters. They don’t use palm oil, vegan friendly and all their nut butters taste so good.

Image source: meridian foods

Lindt Excellence

Not all of the Lindt Excellence chocolates are vegan friendly but the darkest ones are. So, the 70%, 85%  and 90% chocolates are vegan (according to PETA), it’s not very clear on the Lindt Excellence website, you can refine by vegetarian but not vegan which is a bit annoying but PETA has these chocolates on their list so that is good enough for me!

Image source: Lindt

Schar rolls

People always ask my if turning vegan has been expensive, not at all! The expensive part of my food shopping is all the wheat free products, I try to make as much as I can at home because a basket full of gluten free products soon mounts up. But who can be bothered to make rolls all of the time? So I do succumb to buying gluten free bread more than I’d like. Since turning vegan though I’ve found that egg is in all of the bread, ALL OF IT. I know that gluten free flour is heavier so it needs an extra nudge to rise well, thankfully Schar have bread products without eggs and milk – get in! I’m constantly eating the multigrain ciabattas, they are amazing toasted with avocado smashed on the top.

Image source: Schar

With these products it’s hard to moan about life being tough when vegan and gluten free, yes it might take longer to find products without gluten and without animal products but it is possible. I hope this helps someone out there who is struggling.

Featured image source: http://buecherbeutel.com