@colwyn Honestly I eat a lot of the same stuff I used to, you can make chili, spaghetti, or shepard-less pie by using TVP, vegan meat, lentils or beans. Instead of beef bullion you can use high-umami foods like soy sauce, not-beef bullion, or even
marmite if you're not gluten-free.
We eat loads of curries, stir fries, and other
ethnic foods. Instead of chicken and other meats, we often use proteins like tofu, tempeh,
tofu skins/bean curd, but boiled edamame and other beans work great too.
Rice is a pretty standard vegan carb, but since I'm on gluten-free diet for medical reasons I gotta really work hard to squeeze in my potassium, so my carbs of choice are anything high in protein and or potassium. Lots of potatoes, taro, cassava, yucca, beets, and other roots. There's also fruits like bananas, raisins, and anything from the gourd/squash family. Bean or whole grains like quinoa, millet, sorghum, and teff are also highly worth fitting into your diet. For pasta I
highly recommend checking out soy/chickpea/lentil/quinoa/bean-based pastas. If your local grocery has a gluten-free and/or health section, you might be able to find them there.
You can get really creative and make stuff like legume-based pasta with soy milk or silken tofu blended up to make a high-protein Alfredo or "cheese" sauce with options like vegan meatballs, chick'n, green beans, peas, or even
vegan shrimp to top it all off.
For a really low effort lunch (other than left overs) I prep things like pasta salad or quinoa salad. Or I microwave a potato and eat it with the vegan tuna shown in the link above. Just throw in some veggies like lettuce or anything that might be lying around your fridge, then add some spicy mustard,
nutritional yeast, and maybe a handful of raisins. My housemate got me into adding sriracha too!
For breakfasts, snacks, or desert, I like to make protein shakes, or porridge out of things like whole grains or mung beans, then I load each serving up with a variety of fruit, nuts, seeds (chia is especially great because it's so high in omega fatty acids!), and even spices like garam marsala, cinnamon, or cardamom.
If you like baking, basically all dairy can be easily replaced with plant milks, butter with margarine or vegan stick butter, and eggs can be made from store bought powders or at home with
chia or flax meal (which gives your recipes a nice bump of nutrition).
If you are worried about nutrition, I strongly recommend cronomter, and not worrying about getting 100% of everything every day (if you eat right you'll be getting 200-300% of many nutrients most days) except B12, which you should try to get 100% of or more each day, since it flushes from the body very quickly. You can find it in marmite, most vegan milks, nutritional yeast, many fortified cereals, energy drinks, and other fortified foods, but if all else fails you can also get it in multivitamins or often in iron pills. For the other nutrients, I focus more on making sure I get to 100+% of all my nutrients each week buy checking "Trends" then "Nutrition Report". That way the days I get 300% of my iron or calcium tend to even out with the days where I only get 67% of said nutrient.
If you're just starting out, I'd focus on one shopping trip at a time, one meal at a time and work up from there. Think about what vegan foods you might already love like PB&J sandwiches, or ones that can be easily adjusted like orange chicken with tofu instead of meat, and maybe start a recipe collection to help you find the ones you know you definitely like. Use apps like
Happy Cow to find new restaurants or markets, the foods at these places often inspire me to make similar or better things at home. Some great places for recipes include
https://www.forksoverknives.com/ which focuses on healthy recipes, while
minimalist baker isn't fully vegan, but has loads of pretty easy, very delicious meals. These
sausages and these
spring rolls being among my favorite recipes
