Being a vegan is one of those trends that people either love or hate. I, despite not being a fully fledged vegan, enjoy parts of it. Mainly the food. This might sound a bit backwards from the woman who married a butcher but there is a lot of wonderful stuff happening within the vegan food movement, namely Violife vegan cheese.
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Why Violife Vegan Cheese?
Let’s start with a simple fact. I love cheese. Cheese does not love me. For example, at Christmas, I decided to be an idiot and eat an entire cheese board to myself. Of all the stupid things I have done over the course of my life, this has to be one of my top 5 regrettable moments (and if you knew me in my early 20’s you will know that my regrettable moments are rather epic). The cheeseboard made me violently ill and I was bedridden/couldn’t be away from the bathroom for the best part of three days. Since then, I have made an effort to avoid all dairy. I’ve switched to oat milk for my coffee, I don’t use butter for my sandwiches. But cheese, that has been a tough one to replace. Let me be clear, this is not a “save the animals” reason (although we should try and do that too) this is an “I’d rather not feel like I’m dying because I ate dairy”. I have been very honest about my IBS over the years and I will try anything to make my stomach more agreeable.
What did I get?
The guys over at Violife vegan cheese were very generous with the bundle of cheese that was sent to me. The parcel that graced my front door contained-
- Epic mature cheddar flavour
- Le Rond camembert flavour
- Original flavour slices
- Original flavour grated
- Smoky cheddar flavour slices
That is a lot of different vegan cheese. When I was chatting to the guys over there about this, they had a small warning- vegan cheese is not quite like regular cheese, it doesn’t taste exactly the same. Fair enough. There are also certain ways that you have to use it. For example, the bag of grated cheese is the best option for melting. Cheese toasties and pasta bakes can be covered in this lightweight creamy confetti and scorched to create a bubbling mess of cheesy goo.
What did I think?
As someone who loves cheese, I was so excited to try something that tasted like cheese but wouldn’t leave me with stomach pains that made giving birth to a 9lb baby a walk in the park. My lasagne was lacking something without the pile of cheese on top. My tomato sandwiches missed the gentle caress of cheese to hold them together. I pondered on the types of food I could create using some vegan recipes. So, naturally, the first thing that happened when I opened the packet was to stick my grubby mittens into the first cheese packet I could get open. Bliss.
Despite the warning that it doesn’t taste just like cheese, it did taste like cheese. The flavour comparison is like other foods. Roast chicken crisps don’t taste like roast chicken. The foam banana sweets taste like a type of banana that doesn’t exist anymore (that story is false but fun). It is close. Shockingly close. So close that I didn’t tell my kids and they thought it was regular cheese. My eldest son HATES cheese and he was having none of it. The taste was so close that he couldn’t stand it.
Overall
I think I’m in love with Violife vegan cheese. And it might love me too. During the time that I was testing it, I wasn’t ill once. I used it in sandwiches, in my cooking… I even sat and ate the Violife Le Rond with my bare hands as if my body had been possessed by a cheese-obsessed raccoon. Once again, I can eat and cook with cheese without worrying about my insides attempting to escape. And if that isn’t the highest praise, then I don’t know what is.
Vive la Fromage!
