When joining the Vegan Challenge (website is in Finnish) two weeks ago and committing to a vegan diet for January, I was equally looking forward to experiment as I was nervous about cutting off cheese and eggs from my diet. I’ve been a lacto-ovo vegetarian for over 20 years, with a handful of meals with game or organic beef in the past five years, but I never tried to completely eliminate all animal-based foodstuffs before. My main worries were the protein and calcium intake and my impression of many meat and milk substitutes as being highly processed. During the first couple of days I found it a bit challenging to adapt to the new style of cooking. I’ve used ghee or butter for cooking and avoided vegetable margarine like the plague. But I had a big jar of coconut oil at home, so I started using that for cooking and continued to sprinkle olive oil over the cold dishes. I stocked up on organic tofu, chickpeas, lentils and beans for protein and filled the fridge with vegetables …