I see a lot of people at least joking about going vegan lately. I’ve been vegan for roughly… ah, I want to say 4 years now? I lost track awhile ago. It was around the time the wreckers came to Hexbear and convinced a bunch of us to watch Dominion (highly recommend doing so btw, it’s free online).
ANYWAYS, if you’re interested in more than just shitposts and are seriously interested in veganism I was thinking I could help answer any questions you have. Comment here or send me a DM if you’re blush shy. 
This comm has limits on what we can talk about btw, such as diet. And I think the whole website has restrictions on recommending specific brands of food? So DM for questions like that, thanks.
CW: animal products
Do you know, is there a vegan substitute for egg? I am quite fond of fried, scrambled egg (and also of just cooking and eating an egg), so if there is a vegan substitute for that, that would make it a lot easier to become vegan.
Unfortunately, my other question is indeed about diet. How you make sure that you’re getting all of the necessary nutrients? My diet is already very unbalanced and I’m probably not getting all the nutrients, I worry if I just stopped eating animal products and changed nothing else, then it’d make it even worse.
Maybe you can DM me the answers if it’s against the rules to answer this for some reasons? Though I’d rather have a reply here, because that means everyone else who wants to know can also see the answer…
Since there is apparently a rule against recommending brands here I’m gonna be a little vague with some of this answer, but there are several egg alternatives I like. The easiest are the pre made vegan egg mixes, which are sold in grocery stores and are a yellow liquid sold near the animal eggs. These are made of mung beans and a bunch of seasonings, and they scramble up like chicken eggs. Very tasty and easy but a bit pricey.
An everyday alternative is making a tofu scramble. Tofu on its own has a mild flavor so it’s a canvas to season it how you want. Look up recipes if you want the most authentic eggy flavor, but I make mine with turmeric for color, salt, pepper, garlic powder, onion powder, nutritional yeast, and black salt (kala namak) which gives it the egg-like flavor. Pretty much just tear up the tofu, mix with those spices, then pan fry until it’s hot. Optionally mix in some water or stock if the texture is too dry.
If you want to get really crazy there are plenty of vegan recipes to recreate over easy eggs, shakshuka, all manner of egg dishes. But these are generally quite involved. I like watching Thee Burger Dude on YouTube who makes vegan versions of fast food, but also has good recipes for over easy eggs and similar staples.
I personally track my nutrition with a nutrition logging app that tells me all my micro- and macro-nutrients for the day. Just eating a normal diet with foods I like meets 90% of my dietary requirements, but tracking it like this has shown me when I have deficiencies in certain vitamins or when I get too much salt or fat etc. Recently I noticed I haven’t gotten enough vitamin K or A, so I started putting spinach in more of my meals and now all my vitamins are at least hitting my daily minimums.
One last quick vegan tip: nutritional yeast and plant milk make the world go round. My nutritional yeast brand gives me all my B vitamins, some fiber, and some protein in one serving and tastes delicious. My soy milk gives me calcium, protein, and vitamin D every morning. These are core staples to me nowadays
I guess I need to look up nutritional yeast 😅 But at least that sounds like something I could buy in bulk and then eat for a long time. The local store does have plant milk, but no tofu, and I don’t think I ever saw vegan egg mix there, either… I could try going to the “organic” / “alternative” food store, but it’s hard to reach because of car-brained road design (I don’t have a car). Once I find the energy to go outside again, I’ll look there.
Thanks for the advice!
you also really need black salt. It’s sulfurous salt and it goes a long way to making things taste eggy.
I’m pretty partial to mixing it, and some bessan (finely ground chickpea flour) if I want to make say savoury French toast.
Of course! Yeah nutritional yeast is something you just use like seasoning, I put it on tofu or beans or whatever. Has a savory flavor. It also keeps for a long time ime.
And most big box stores like walmart have at least a small selection of these things but in my country ass town the stocks on the shelves are limited. I usually have better luck at other grocery stores that I won’t name to not doxx myself lol
Also fuck cars, I couldn’t even walk to the nearest store if I wanted to here. I hope you stay safe on your journeys through the hostile infrastructure ✊
Chickpea egg is a great substitute for scrambles and omelettes. I still miss a dippy egg every now and then but at this point I just like chickpea egg more than bird egg.
https://sweetsimplevegan.com/chickpea-scramble/
Chickpeas! I need to buy some of those… Bookmarked the recipe.
cw: animal products
On the same topic, do you have any suggestions for butter substitutes? I like both the flavor and the fat content, and I don’t know what kind of oil would be a good substitute.
Most grocery stores sell vegan butter products, at least in my neck of the woods. Sometimes they are advertised as vegetable spread, sometimes they directly say vegan butter. But regardless of brand they exist and imo are very similar to animal butter in taste and texture
This very much depends on where you live. Never seen vegan butter in my city but there are homemade vegan butter recipes, generally using soy milk, coconut oil(naturally saturated) and some other things like emulsifiers.
Edit: Apparently this is not the comm for recipes sorry.
They may not be especially well-marked, but you can often find them among other margarines.
I live in a third world country where plant milks just recently got into normal markets.
Even the catalogue for the local vegan shop doesn’t have any butters.
I’ll DM you some recommendations, but I will say here that you’d be surprised how many margarines are vegan friendly.
NewOldGuard’s answer was great, let me DM you some recommendations as well.