Vegan Bolognaise = Vegolonaise!

I'm new to this vegetarian thing. I'm not a pure vego, unlike one of my friends who was born and raised without meat and has never even tasted the deliciousness of roast lamb or BBQ pork buns. My other fellow vego/vegan friends are all much more sensitive than I am and after watching Earthlings feel they could never, EVER have another animal's death on their conscience. I feel guilty even admitting this: but sometimes I really miss meat.

I never allow myself to say this out loud. Probably because most of my friends and family thought I was going through some weird hippy faze or a made up detox when I gave up the animal carcasses three months ago. No one really thought it would stick. I can't blame them really, in the past I have ripped a cook chook apart with my bare hands while the soft flesh was still warm, only to shove the drumstick in my mouth and gnaw away happily like a Neanderthal.

Thoughts of never eating mum's Osso buco again or secretly sneaking pork crackling before serving the roast or enjoying delicious Danish Christmas food like roast duck and frikadeller bring so much woe to my heart that I am still not sure if going without these things is worth the principle of not eating meat. But so far I’ve been able to push these things from my mind most of the time because I’m not at home smelling mum’s cooking, my carnivorous housemates rarely cook a roast and Christmas is still seven months away. The meat I miss most of all are my everyday favourites, staples of my meat-eating life, like spaghetti bolognaise.

So when I came across this recipe from the delectable Veggie num num I was pretty excited to give it a whirl and maybe even kill my craving to hoe into the meat again. While I am extremely proud of my efforts over the last three months and have cooked some amazing vego and vegan dishes, this was the first time I tried to make a complete meaty dish into a vegan/vego version, without previous glowing testimonials from friends.

I wasn’t sure how this would turn out, and I was even tempted to ignore the recipe and just make my own up (I was once a kick-ass spag bol aficionado!) But I put my trust in the geniuses behind Veggie num num and was not disappointed. The only changes I made to the recipe was substituting brown lentils for tinned Sanitarium nut mince (available in the health food aisle at the supermarket) as it was already gracing the shelves in my pantry and adding a grated carrot. I also couldn’t quite handle the wholegrain pasta the first time round (I am just not a fan) and used regular spaghetti instead.

The result was vegan deliciousness that was tomatoey and tasty and was freakily almost exactly like spag bol. See for yourself!


So eager to taste was I that I neglected to focus the camera correctly, but you get the idea.
xo