Vegan Gourmet/Vegenaise Product Review

Although I have not been actively posting about it the last few weeks, at the end of May, I decided that for June, I was going to go vegetarian. I come from a meat eating family and I have been eating meat my entire life, but I have always felt the pangs of guilt doing so and for some reason the last year or so, it has become almost impossible to take a bite. Anyway, I also know there are health benefits to cutting out meat, so that helped steer me in this direction. A few days ago, I was at my mom's house and all she had were meat based products to eat, so I thought, well I'll be a vegetarian at home and eat meat in social situations. It did not go over well. Not only did I feel gross eating meat, I felt sick for the entire next day. I have not had any meat other than that one time. What was supposed to be a month long project looks like it will turn into something more than that.

That is why I am so glad to have discovered Follow Your Heart's products. One that you have probably heard of is Vegenaise. It is a substitute for mayonnaise that is soy based and doesn't contain egg. You can use Vegenaise for many purposes such as for a salad dressing, a condiment for a sandwich or like I did to replace the oil in a muffin recipe. I found a recipe on VegWeb for Chocolate Muffins. The only thing I changed was using Vegenaise in place of the vegetable oil. These muffins turned out wonderful. My husband could not get enough of them! I made them without cupcake liners and just sprayed the muffin tin with cooking oil. The next time I attempt these, I will use liners, they were hard to get out of the pan and most fell apart, but they were still delicious. I think they would have stayed together better in paper liners. I did take a little taste of the Veganaise as I made the cupcakes and to my surprise it tasted pretty much exactly like mayo. I am thinking my next adventure with it will either be something like a tomato basil sandwich or maybe even a pea salad or something of that sort!

Follow Your Heart  has a line of products called "Vegan Gourmet." These include dairy replacements such a " block cheese," "sour cream," and "cream cheese." None of these actually contain dairy, but are meant to replace dairy products of the same nature. I used Vegan Gourmet cream cheese to make a  vegetarian version of  this mini pot pie that I really like. Instead of using chicken stock, I used vegetable stock. To make it quicker, I used frozen organic vegetables and to give it a creamy texture I used the cream cheese replacement. It is really simple, you just preheat the oven to 350, spray a muffin tin with cooking spray, place the egg roll wrappers in, boil the frozen veggies until cooked, drain the water, add the Vegan Gourmet cream cheese and 1 cup of vegetable stock (or not chicken stock, which tastes like chicken but is vegetable based- I will probably do this next time) Add some onion powder, garlic powder and tarragon to taste and then add a little bit of cornstarch to thicken the base. Boil that in the pan really quickly for about a minute, then spoon the mixture into the egg roll wrappers and put the tops down so it will make a little bundle. Bake in the oven for around 20 minutes and you have a tasty ALMOST vegan pot pie...if only I could find a vegan egg roll wrapper! Give it a try and come back and let me know what you think. This is a simple recipe with very few ingredients! Hope you enjoy! Even my husband said he couldn't tell it was vegetarian!

Vegan Gourmet Cream Cheese

Ingredients used for the pot pie bundles.

Finished product. The one in the back is what it looks
 like before you cut it open.

Follow Your Heart products are all free of common allergens, which make them a good choice for people with major allergens or those who just want to eat healthier. A big win in my book is that ALL of their products are GMO free.


*Disclaimer- I was provided complimentary products for this review. I was not required to write a positive review and all opinions stated are 100% my own.