Show Notes

In this episode, we discuss the concept of ‘Veganuary’, where people try a plant-based diet for the month of January. We give advice on how to transition to being vegan. We suggest various tips and tricks. We also suggest plant-based alternatives for condiments, meats, and cheeses. Additionally, we recommend vegan-friendly snacks. We explain how to increase protein intake through vegan sources. We highlight some of the hidden non-vegan ingredients in goods. We also suggest some vegan-friendly restaurants. Lastly, we provide mechanisms to handle social situations. Finally, we introduce our new free Veganuary e-book. It contains a meal plan based on the discussed high-protein vegan recipes and a teaser for the next episode about micronutrients.

Check out our free e-book: Veganuary High Protein Survival Guide

Our mentioned articles:
Guide to Tofu
Guide to TVP

Full Podcast Transcription

Muscle Deficient Vegan: Welcome to the VeGAINS Fitness and Nutrition podcast. This is episode eight. I am the muscle deficient vegan. Here with the protein deficient vegan. Do you want to say hi?

Protein Deficient Vegan: Hi.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: Hi. So happy new year, everybody. Today is January 1, 2024. January, if you don’t know, also starts Veganuary, which is in the month of January. People will try a plant-based diet or try out the vegan lifestyle if they’re maybe thinking about transitioning to something like that.

Protein Deficient Vegan: And did you know a lot of people that try out Veganuary actually stay vegan?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: Oh, I didn’t know that. That’s pretty cool.

Protein Deficient Vegan: It’s a pretty good ratio.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: So in the spirit of Veganuary, we’re going to go over some kind of tips and tricks for going plant-based.

Protein Deficient Vegan: Over the years, I’ve gotten a lot of questions about “Don’t you have cravings for meat and dairy products?” Which I think is a pretty normal question because a lot of people are omnivorous before they decide to go plant based. So we’ve put together a list of our favorite swaps for condiments, meat, cheeses.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: So for condiments, we’ve got follow your heart mayonnaise and follow your heart ranch dressing. You can find both of those at the grocery store. They’re both really good substitutions.

Protein Deficient Vegan: Yeah, I think I like the ranch dressing even better than hidden valley, honestly.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: The ranch dressing is actually really good. Then for some meat alternatives, there’s a brand called Gardein. G-A-R-D-E-I-N. That makes a whole lot of stuff like fish fillets. Fish fillets, chicken tenders. Obviously not real fish or chicken. Vegan substitutions.

Protein Deficient Vegan: Crab cakes.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: Other crab cakes.

Protein Deficient Vegan: I think their seafood alternatives are probably the best we’ve found.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: They also have a lot of good fake chicken stuff.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: There’s also a cool brand called meati that’s kind of new, but they use mushroom root and make it kind of like a fake pulled meat type situation.

Protein Deficient Vegan: Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: Honestly, the texture is so close for what I can remember that I don’t like it.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: I like it. It’s really good in tacos.

Protein Deficient Vegan: The next one is Morningstar, which has been around Forever. And when I was a vegetarian and a little kid, I had Morningstar all the time. They still have a lot of really good vegan meat alternatives, like their veggie corn dogs are fire.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: Also, you’ve probably heard of beyond and impossible for burger patties. I think they’re pretty interchangeable. They both are patties of fake meat. So you can use them the same way you would use any other patty of meat.

Protein Deficient Vegan: I think they also have, like, sausages and stuff. Yeah, not really my cup of tea. I just don’t really like that stuff.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: They’re not outstanding, but they fit the bill. If you really need to substitute in hamburgers. Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: If you’re really missing it, I think it’ll do.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: Also, for something like sandwiches, tofurky deli slices are pretty good. It’s basically tofu shaped like deli turkey slices. Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: The macros are good too, I think.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: Yeah, they have a pretty high protein.

Protein Deficient Vegan: Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: Also plant based jerkies. There’s the Louisville Vegan jerky company. They make a lot of good vegan jerky. One of my favorite flavors is the smoky Carolina barbecue. And for another primary protein source, Seitan is a great option. We really like the blackbird brand of Seitan. You can get it in some stores, but we just order it from their website. They do mail order. They have a really good barbecue flavor.

Protein Deficient Vegan: Oh, yeah, that one’s my favorite.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: And the original flavor is good. We use in, like, stir fries and stuff like that.

Protein Deficient Vegan: Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: The barbecue one, we just straight up eat.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: Like little cave people.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: Yeah, it’s really easy to cook. If you’re looking for a meat substitute that’s really easy to cook, they’re actually precooked, so you just kind of heat them back up in a pan or something, and you can just eat it like a big pile of pulled meat. Next, we have some cheese substitutions. So follow your heart has a bunch of good cheeses. One of the ones we really like is their parmesan.

Protein Deficient Vegan: Yeah, it browns really good in the oven, so we like to use it on, like, casseroles. It’s good on pizzas too.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: And that’s like a grated parmesan.

Protein Deficient Vegan: I wouldn’t use it in anything cold. Like, you definitely want to heat this one up because the texture is so on point when it’s baked.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: Also, if you’re looking for a block of parmesan, we like violife for that.

Protein Deficient Vegan: Yes.

Protein Deficient Vegan: And we also like peaceful rebel.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: Oh, yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: They have a pretty good Parmesan block. And it’s made out of tofu, so it doesn’t have, like, crazy amounts of protein, but it definitely has more than any of the other ones.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: Yeah, that’s a new one we’ve just recently tried, but I really like it. Also, for shredded cheeses, like your mexican cheese or shredded cheddars, we typically use violife for those. They’ve actually got a mexican flavor and a cheddar flavor and a couple of other ones as well. Mozzarella. I think they even have a mozzarella.

Protein Deficient Vegan: Yeah, we really like on, like, nachos, quesadillas. I also like adding it to tofu scramble. It gives it, like, a little bit extra texture.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: Yeah, it kind of holds it together really well.

Protein Deficient Vegan: Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: Daya also has decent shredded cheese.

Protein Deficient Vegan: It used to suck, but it’s gotten a lot better.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: Yeah, I agree with that. And then for making pizzas and casseroles, the Miyoko’s liquid mozzarella, it is so good.

Protein Deficient Vegan: It browns, but it’s also, like, nice and creamy. And you don’t normally get that with mozzarella. Normally it’s, like, oily and gets kind of, like, liquidy and disgusting. But this one bakes really nice and it tastes great on pizza or casseroles. And they didn’t really have them in stores, but I’ve seen them in a lot more stores now.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: Yeah, it was really hard to find other than just ordering online for a while. But we’ve seen it a couple of places now. Also, Miyoko’s has some artisan cheeses, so there’s a couple of special ones we use for different sauces and things like that.

Protein Deficient Vegan: The sun dried tomato one is super awesome because you can just literally heat it up with your favorite plant based milk and you have an instant pasta sauce.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: One of our favorites is nuts for cheese. They have some really good artisan cheese wedges, and they all taste really good on, like, crackers. They just spread really nice.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: And there’s a company here local to Chicago called cheese and thank you

Muscle Deficient Vegan: That has a bunch of really good options. They can also be found in Whole Foods, I think, right?

Protein Deficient Vegan: Yes.

Protein Deficient Vegan: Yeah. And if you’re lucky enough to live close to Chicago, they have pop ups and you can try out other random crap they don’t sell at the store.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: Also, if you like feta cheese, follow your heart has some feta crumbles that you can put on pretty much all the same things.

Protein Deficient Vegan: Yeah, I really like it on salads or like, even heat it up. It’s really good.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: And then cream cheese. Violife has a cream cheese, but also Philadelphia has some cream cheeses coming out now that are vegan. And those are pretty good.

Protein Deficient Vegan: Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: I feel like violife and Philadelphia are really similar. Really good for bagels. Probably don’t cook with these because they’re coconut oil based and they will turn into actual liquid. So if you’re going to cook, probably use the Miyoko’s cream cheese, and the texture is, like, a little more grainy than the other ones. It’s not as smooth, but it tastes good.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: And then if you’re looking for sliced cheese, we don’t use this very often, but follow your heart does have some sliced cheese. And actually, Kraft just recently came out with sliced vegan cheeses, so they were actually pretty good. I think that’s probably the go to from now.

Protein Deficient Vegan: Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: They don’t melt exactly the same as real cheese unless if you add water to your pan after you put it on, like, a burger or something, and then put the cheese on top, and then you add, like, a spritz of water and cover the pan. It has enough humidity to actually get the cheese to melt, and then it’s fucking awesome.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: All right, so that’s all the cheese options we have. There’s a lot of other ones out there. Those are just the ones we’ve tried a lot of them. So those are just the ones we kind of keep coming back to.

Protein Deficient Vegan: Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: Next we have a bunch of snack options. So one of the weird things when you kind of switch to going vegan or plant based is the big substitutions, like, the ones we just talked about are a problem. But really day to day. One of the trickier things is trying to figure out what snacks you like now.

Protein Deficient Vegan: Just like most of the bigger snack brands are not vegan, and sometimes they’ll just have, like, tiny amounts of milk powder or something that’s in them and that makes them not vegan, even though everything else is vegan. So that’s annoying.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: Yeah, we do have a couple we found that are good and more are coming out every day.

Protein Deficient Vegan: Right.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: But there’s a brand called lesser evil that actually has really good snacks. I think you like the white cheddar popcorn a lot.

Protein Deficient Vegan: Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: Not all of their snacks are vegan, but they do have a couple really good vegan ones.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: Okay. Also, if you like chocolate, there’s a lot of really good vegan chocolate now.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: Plant based Reese’s cups, plant based Hershey bars, Lindt chocolate has a couple of oat based chocolates. They actually have some new oat truffles that are really good. And then there’s another brand called Unreal that does some chocolates. They have some peanut butter cups and some chocolate bars also.

Protein Deficient Vegan: Yep. And then for ice cream, we have a lot of ice cream choices nowadays. And I really like the Ben and Jerry’s non dairy ones. I feel like they’re just as good as the original dairy ones.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: Those are my favorite. And I can’t tell a difference between those and the dairy ones.

Protein Deficient Vegan: I can’t either. And then briars has a really good non dairy vanilla that’s made with oat milk.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: Oh, yeah, that vanilla is super good.

Protein Deficient Vegan: I think it’s better than any vanilla I’ve ever had.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: Yeah, I think the briars oat milk vanilla is like the ice cream you should put on top of a pie or something.

Protein Deficient Vegan: Yeah, it’s for sure. And then Nada Moo has pints that are really good, lots of different flavors. So delicious Has good ice cream bars. And then we actually just tried a brand that’s pretty new called wicked. And their ice cream bars are pretty good.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: Oh, yeah, the wicked ones were really good.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: They had a strawberry one that was super good.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: Yeah, Berry white was the flavor.

Protein Deficient Vegan: Awesome.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: It was really good. And then for cookies, Oreo has some vegan flavors. Nutter butters are vegan. And then there’s a brand called Sweet Lorenz. It’s just like cookie dough you need to bake, but they’re vegan. And then there’s a cool snack called drizzlelicious. We get off Amazon, but it’s basically just like a tiny rice cake drizzled in vegan chocolate.

Protein Deficient Vegan: Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: And they come in like 100 calorie snack packs. So they’re really good if you’re trying to manage your calories too, but still want something sweet.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: Right.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: So now that we got all the very unhealthy snacks out of the way, I mean, obviously we don’t eat a lot of this stuff, but everybody’s got to have something around you. You’re going to go crazy. So anyway, we also have protein bars. So vegan protein bars are varied.

Protein Deficient Vegan: Yes.

Protein Deficient Vegan: And we very much disagree with each other on protein bars.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: So I actually like the no cow protein bars

Protein Deficient Vegan: Because he has horrible taste.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: But they’re like a soft chew protein bar instead of like a hard, dry protein bar.

Protein Deficient Vegan: They’re so disgusting, actually.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: Well, they have a lot of flavors and I really like them.

Protein Deficient Vegan: Anyways, it’s okay to be wrong sometimes, but if you want something that tastes good, I would go with misfits or the bear bell. Plant based bars.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: Yeah, barebells are actually really good. Not as good as no cow, but.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: Barebell are good.

Protein Deficient Vegan: Okay.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: Also, you’re probably eventually going to want to go eat at a restaurant and not make food or eat food at your house at least once or twice a year. Right. So it’s kind of tricky to find vegan options at some restaurants. There are a couple, though, that are pretty reliable for being able to go and pick up some food relatively quickly and be consistent.

Protein Deficient Vegan: Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: Like if you’re traveling or you’re desperate, taco Bell or chipotle have pretty decent options. And then if you don’t already have this app, you should get it. It’s called happy cow and it’s kind of like Google reviews, but it’s just for vegans and vegetarians and it has saved us many times.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: Happy cow, ever since we found it, has really changed the game on how we can eat while we travel. I mean, it’s still not amazing.

Protein Deficient Vegan: Right.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: It’s still hard to find places, but happy cow will at least show you all the options, right?

Protein Deficient Vegan: It doesn’t create options, but it shows you what’s there.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: And there’s actually, in a lot of places, there’s a lot more there than you would think. So it’s been super helpful and highly recommend.

Protein Deficient Vegan: The next thing you might run into is just social settings, like whether it’s family gatherings, social outings, work functions and stuff, where there just aren’t going to be plant based options. So it’s important to have conversations up front, like letting people know your dietary restrictions or bringing your own food. But especially if you’re going to do it long term, you definitely want to have a plan for those.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: Yeah, I agree. And also the bulk of what you’re probably going to be eating as a vegan is going to be stuff that you cook yourself. There’s not enough packaged, prepared, especially healthy food out there to really sustain you a lot.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: Especially.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: I mean, it’s going to be expensive if you try to do it that way.

Protein Deficient Vegan: Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: Especially the meat and dairy. Substitutions can get really pricey.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: So I mean, you really want to probably get pretty comfortable with cooking your own food and how to use spices. And I mean, you definitely go out there and experiment, try some things. We’ve tried some of that and it’s worked out pretty well. But just get it a little comfortable. You can make some easy things at first. Obviously, we have a lot of recipes on the website you can go through and try, but you should really get adventurous with cooking your own food.

Protein Deficient Vegan: Yeah, for sure. Especially since a lot of restaurants, the vegan options are trash.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: Yes.

Protein Deficient Vegan: And you can almost always make something better at home than you can at a restaurant. Unless you’re going to like a vegan specific restaurant where they actually have vegan chefs.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: Most standard restaurants, the vegan option is just to take all the protein and calories off of the dish and give you the lettuce that’s left over.

Protein Deficient Vegan: Right. That’s a very sad way to live.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: Speaking of protein. So protein is one thing that you obviously will want to focus on, especially if you have fitness goals. And on a vegan diet, your protein sources are going to be a lot different than they are. Basically, none of the stuff you used for protein, probably as an omnivore, is going to be stuff you can use for protein on a vegan diet.

Protein Deficient Vegan: Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: So if you are switching from omnivore to plant based and you’re just taking out all of your animal proteins and all of your animal derived products and you’re not adding in anything new, like plant based proteins, you are probably going to be deficient.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: I mean, swapping to beans and lentils will only get you so far, and it’s probably sufficient protein to be healthy, but it’s going to be a pretty low protein diet unless you intentionally seek out the primary protein sources that vegans use, which are like TVP, tofu, Seitan, tempeh and wheat gluten are really the primary, very high protein percentage sources. And if you are unclear with how to use TVP or tofu, which are two of our favorites, we’ve actually got dedicated articles on the website about each of those now.

Protein Deficient Vegan: Yes.

Protein Deficient Vegan: And creative ways to use them.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: Now onto plant based versus vegan. They’re used pretty interchangeably and dietary wise they’re almost the same, but other intents and purposes, they are not the same.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: So plant based usually does mean in terms of food, it does mean vegan, but some things that are marked plant based, or even some people who say I’m following a plant based diet, that can mean predominantly plant based, but they still include some animal products. So you do want to be careful. Not everything that says plant based is 100% vegan, and plant based really just focuses on the food. So if somebody says they’re plant based, they’re probably not following a vegan lifestyle and things outside of food.

Protein Deficient Vegan: Yeah, it’s usually for health purposes. You might go plant based or maybe like environmental impact. Right now, veganism, that’s a lifestyle. And people are vegans for ethical reasons around animals, which we won’t go into all that here. Lots of good articles you could read, but we will talk about some of the things you might want to look out for if you are trying out veganism, because there’s a lot of hidden animal derived stuff in a lot of.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: Different things really blow your mind sometimes. Like why did they use this and this thing.

Protein Deficient Vegan: It makes no sense. Like clothing, accessories, shoes. You really got to be careful what you buy specifically around like shoes and purses.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: The obvious thing is leather.

Protein Deficient Vegan: Right.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: But there’s way more than that.

undefined: Oh yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: There’s like silk and down or feathers. Suede, animal derived glues. Yeah, the glues and dyes.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: Crazy.

Protein Deficient Vegan: Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: So like shoes, you want to make sure you’re getting vegan shoes. Even if they don’t use leather, they might still not be vegan. So there are lots of good comprehensive lists out there that talk about which shoes, which purses or leather. I don’t know a lot about shoes and purses. So you’re going to have to google that.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: Some of the brands are coming around. Some of the bigger brands, like Nike, do have a couple of vegan shoes.

Protein Deficient Vegan: Hoka has some really good athletic shoes. The next one is like beauty products and cosmetics. Those can be kind of hard to figure out because you might see like a cruelty free label, which actually doesn’t necessarily mean it’s vegan. It could just mean they don’t test on animals, but they still use animal products, which is bizarre. Yeah, but that’s just something. They’re also like good lists for what is and isn’t vegan. And a lot of stores have like a filter. You can filter products by what’s vegan now?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: Oh, that’s pretty cool. I know that’s historically been kind of one of the harder things to track down the source of and what was really done through production and things like that.

Protein Deficient Vegan: Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: On food there are some hidden non vegan ingredients like honey, gelatin, anything fortified with lanolin. You’d find that in like cereals. So basically those aren’t vegan. Watch out for those. Pretty much includes any gummy bears, gummy worms. They do make vegan ones, but just stuff to keep an eye out for.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: So a lot of alcohol is also not vegan. Beers and wines and liquors, some of those can be vegan, some of them can’t. I think your best bet is probably just to google the ones you like and see whether they’re vegan or not. There’s a lot of nuance in there.

Protein Deficient Vegan: We don’t drink enough to give you advice on that. Another weird one is toilet paper. That just blows my mind. But most toilet papers are not vegan.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: Yeah, that was really surprising, actually.

Protein Deficient Vegan: Yeah, so I mean, you still have to wipe in public, but like at home. Maybe try a vegan toilet paper brand we really like. Who gives a crap?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: So yeah, if this sounds interesting to you and you’re curious about some of these swaps and different types of substitutions and just generally about plant based. We actually put together a free ebook on the website. I’ll put the link to it in the show notes. Or you can just go to the website and you’ll see a pop up and you can get it that way. It also includes a macro cheat sheet for your macronutrients. Like we talked about last week. It’s got a weekly meal plan inspiration, which is basically like a base weekly meal plan, but you can add some stuff to it to get a little more calories out of it.

Protein Deficient Vegan: Yeah, it’s like each day is around 1500 to 1750 calories with about 120 grams of protein. That’s obviously not going to work for everyone. Most people are going to eat more than that just to show you how.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: To get your protein. At least guaranteed using some of our recipes, admittedly. But you do get pie almost every day with this meal plan.

Protein Deficient Vegan: No, you get it every day.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: Yeah, you get pie or cheesecake every day with this meal plan. Still hit your protein goals and your calorie goals and have room to spare on your calories. So beat that.

Protein Deficient Vegan: What more could you want?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: Right?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: So we also have twelve recipes in the book. You might have already heard of some of them because we talk about them here also. But if you’re new to the podcast, we’ll talk about kind of which ones we’ve included in the book here for the meal plan. So we’ve got first a blueberry high protein blueberry smoothie bowl.

Protein Deficient Vegan: Yes.

Protein Deficient Vegan: And that’s just normal smoothie bowl, except we used extra firm silk and tofu. And you could of course use this recipe as like a base and switch out whatever fruit you want to use.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: Next up, we’ve got a tofu scramble. So if you’re used to scrambling eggs in the morning as an omnivore, tofu scramble is a really great substitution, just as easy to make and super delicious. You can even make it look like eggs by putting some turmeric on it.

Protein Deficient Vegan: Yeah, and you could make a pretty big batch of it and just kind of eat it throughout the week.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: We also have TVP protein, pumpkin craisin muffins.

Protein Deficient Vegan: These are super good.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: They are super good. We were a little surprised the first time we tried TVP for muffins at how well they turned out. But I mean, they’re just as good as any other breakfast muffin. And they’re healthy.

Protein Deficient Vegan: Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: Keep you full for some lunch options. We have a high protein crab rangoon dip. You could put this in a tortilla or eat it with tortilla chips, but it’s a really good, easy lunch option. And you can pack it and you won’t need to heat it up because you eat it cold.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: This is also a good one for maybe a snack. We’ve also got a high protein black bean pumpkin quesadilla. So if you like quesadillas, we got you covered here. Black bean and pumpkin. If you haven’t tried a lot of pumpkin flavored things, you might be like, what the hell is that going to taste like? But I can tell you it tastes really great.

Protein Deficient Vegan: Pumpkin.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: You can’t really taste the pumpkin when you cook it like this. It just kind of makes it a little sweeter and more moist.

Protein Deficient Vegan: Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: And adds some veggies.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: It’s really delicious, though.

Protein Deficient Vegan: It’s super quick to make, too. Next up is a high protein tofu salad. This has a ranch dressing that we actually made out of tofu. And then it also has tofu crumbles. So I really like it. I think the ranch tastes pretty similar to normal ranch dressing.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: Yeah, it’s really good. I like it better than the follow your heart ranch we talked about earlier, honestly. But you had to make it every time.

Protein Deficient Vegan: Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: And it doesn’t keep for like two months or anything.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: Because of the tofu, it doesn’t stay as long as the normal ranch does. Next, we have a high protein, garlicky mushroom Alfredo. So if you like pasta, this is like a nice, heavy pasta that’s going to keep you full, but it’s high protein. Got a lot of garlic in it. If you like mushrooms, this is loaded with them.

Protein Deficient Vegan: Yes.

Protein Deficient Vegan: And mushrooms are pretty good in protein. That’s true.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: And delicious.

Protein Deficient Vegan: And delicious.

Protein Deficient Vegan: So good.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: Also got a high protein pasta primavera. So this has a ton of veggies into it. And what’s the sauce?

Protein Deficient Vegan: The sauce is made out of extra firm silken tofu, too. It’s kind of like a cheesy Alfredo sauce.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: But this one’s fun because you can basically customize it any way you want. Like if there are veggies on this that you don’t like, you can swap them out with something else. Make different kind every week.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: Mix and match. We also have a high protein stuffed portobello mushroom. So this is basically a huge portobello mushroom cap stuffed with a bunch of TVP.

Protein Deficient Vegan: Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: And parmesan and like spinach.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: It’s freaking delicious.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: These mushrooms, when they cook this way are just like so moist.

Protein Deficient Vegan: Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: And you don’t have to rehydrate the TVP first. You just mix it in and, I don’t know, it cooks really well.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: And it takes like five minutes of actual work.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: Yeah, pretty fast. And then into the dessert snack section, if you want to call it that. I mean, they’re high protein, but high protein dessert is a thing.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: So we got a high protein, triple chocolate cheesecake.

Protein Deficient Vegan: I love this thing more than anything.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: Yeah, it’s really good.

Protein Deficient Vegan: Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: I think I can sit down and eat this whole thing at once if I really needed to.

Protein Deficient Vegan: Oh, yeah, me too. Easily. I could also eat the next one, which is the peanut butter chocolate protein cheesecake.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: Yeah, peanut butter chocolate. Basically a big, high protein Reese’s pie.

Protein Deficient Vegan: Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: It’s ridiculous. I can’t even believe it has, like, tofu in it. It’s stupid good.

Protein Deficient Vegan: Actually, we got our family to try the chocolate cheesecake.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: And they liked it.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: And again, no protein powder in these. It’s all tofu TVP. And the peanut butter one actually uses a pb fit peanut butter powder, which is still natural. It’s just kind of crushed up peanuts.

Protein Deficient Vegan: Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: I don’t know if they take some of the fat out, I think. Yeah, it’s really good, though.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: Next up, we have a chocolate and vanilla pudding pie. Basically, we’ve got separate recipes for chocolate pudding and vanilla pudding using silk and tofu. So we just kind of combine those together into a pudding pie. And then we’ve got this, like peanut butter powdered sugar crumble and we just sprinkle it on top and it goes on like a normal cookie crust. So it’s really good. If you like pudding pies, it’s only.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 20% protein, but you pair it with some of the higher protein dishes throughout the day and you can get away with it.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: Well, where are you going to find another pudding pie that’s anywhere near 20% protein?

Protein Deficient Vegan: I don’t think they make those.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: So if you were going to try out the meal plan that we put in the ebook, it’s also got a shopping list included so that you can just get everything at once in one trip. All right, so that’s it for this week. Next week we are going to talk about micronutrients. Hopefully. I know if you have been following along, maybe you were expecting that this week, but there’s a lot going on in micronutrients, so make sure we have time to kind of get that information into a form that makes sense and just get the relevant things out of it for you. So we will try to tackle that.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: Between now and then.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: So check out our website and if you have any questions, as always, feel free to reach out. You can reach out through the contact form on the website, through the social medias we have in the show notes or via email. Well, do you want to say bye?

Protein Deficient Vegan: Bye!

Muscle Deficient Vegan: Bye, everybody.

Vegan that likes to pick up heavy things and put them down again.
USAW Level 1 Coach
NASM CPT

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