It is difficult if you try to replace things.
Sorry, this is a wall of text. I'll
bold a few things to make it less awful to read. Also, I hope this doesn't come across as vegan-preachy. I really don't mean for it to seem that way. I just get very excited about this stuff when someone says they're leaning in this direction. Even if you change your diet just a tiny bit and see a positive effect, that's a win. :-)
The above is so true. It really helps to stop thinking of it in terms of
deprivation and just think of all the great things you CAN have instead. And more than that, think of all the benefits to your health, the animals, and the environment. The food is also much less dense in calories, so you get to eat more! :-) In fact, a pitfall that new vegans sometimes encounter is feeling weak because they don't realize they really need to eat what visually seems to be a huge amount of food compared to what they were eating before.
Some people do use
"replacement foods" like mock meats, but many of us didn't/don't. Most people I've spoken to, or whose blogs I've read, or whatever, say their diet is MUCH more varied and interesting now that they don't use any animal products. I went to a week-long live-in vacation thing one time, and they provided every meal for us. I was the only vegan there. After a few days of tofu in some form at EVERY MEAL, 3 times a day, I finally had to tell the poor chef that really, I was perfectly happy just eating the rest of the food, without the tofu. He always made beautiful bean dishes, grains, salads, etc. There was no need to add tofu, but he just felt like something had to replace the slab of meat everyone else was getting.
Foods from
other cultures are a great way to get ideas and, like Malkynn said, to distract yourself from your usual meals with delicious alternatives so that you
don't notice what's missing. I love Indian, Thai, and Mexican foods in particular.
Thevegan8.com has recipes that include only 8 ingredients (quick and easy!), and she lives in Texas, so she does a lot of TexMex kind of stuff. Also,
laylita.com is written by a woman who was raised in Ecuador, and although the blog is not vegan/vegetarian, she has a lot of recipes that happen to be vegan/vegetarian.
Veganricha.com has amazing Indian food. She does non-Indian recipes, too, but I think her Indian ones really shine.
Maybe if you could give us some idea of
why you and your wife don't like to cook, the rest of us could help you with that? Is it the time? The monotony of chopping stuff? The fear that something new won't taste good and then your efforts will be wasted? The fact that you just don't care about fancy schmancy dishes? The cleanup process? I'm convinced that there is a method of cooking for everyone. You might not ever love cooking, and that's okay, but you can find a way to feed yourself and your family that makes you happy.
My husband isn't a fan of tofu, either, but he likes
tempeh, and he loves
soy curls. Both contain only soy beans, and they are not textured vegetable protein, which is very processed and considered unhealthy by most nutrition experts. You can find tempeh in most grocery stores (pre-seasoned, pre-cooked or not), and you can get soy curls from Amazon or from butlerfoods.com.
As for
cheese, you might find Dr. Neal Barnard's book "The Cheese Trap" interesting. Many people have a hard time getting it out of their diet, and that's partly because it contains an addictive chemical (meant to entice babies, of any species, to keep going back for more milk from Mom so they don't die of starvation, but when you concentrate it into a cheese, it's a whole different level of "enticing"). I haven't found a commercial cheese substitute I like, but my mom likes some of the Kite Hill products. They're expensive, though. My favorite homemade cheese is the one in "Wicked Healthy" by Chad and Derek Sarno:
https://wickedhealthyfood.com/2014/12/20/wicked-healthy-base-cheez-sauce/I've also heard very good things about Plantiful Kiki's cheese sauce (search her YouTube channel), so I'm going to try that, too. The Wicked Healthy one makes something like 10 cups, so I put it into ice cube trays and freeze it, then toss the cubes in a bag so I can just take out what I want for pasta, vegetables, etc. For me, putting my freezer to work is how I keep making awesome meals without spending all day in the kitchen every day.
