When it comes to my breakfasts and dinners, ABBA’s words of eternal pop wisdom provide a very accurate soundtrack: I’m nothing special, in fact, I’m a bit of a bore – and even worse, ear plugs tend to be plugged in when I start to sing.

Compared to the trendsetting vegans on social media, I’m not quite there with the cool kids. When Insta-vegans say how they’ve kept their breakfast nice and simple for a change by incorporating maca powder, desiccated coconut, a splash of sriracha, plantain fried in coconut oil, beetroot essence, and pumpkin pie spice into their morning porridge (“five minutes, and you can even have it on the go!”), I might top mine with peanut butter and raisins. And that’s if I’m feeling adventurous.

When lunch is concerned, though, the stakes are raised. As tempting as it is to complete my degree in pyjamas, surrounded by the safe triangle of my room, gyp room, and Sainsbury’s, sometimes I just need to go out for apparently important things like supervisions, lectures, and the darkness of UL’s North Wing 6. This translates into one word in foodie terms: lunch. What can a vegan eat when out and about, other than going for “oh, I’ll have the lettuce without the dressing”? The answer – a lot ­­– comes in four different steps. 

“Quite often there’s a cheeky baked potato option around”

The obvious choice is the packed lunch. Boring, I hear you say, but what was once just necessary nutrition is now a platform to release your inner culinary artist and take on some of that Instagram coolness. Overnight chia, quinoa, and other superfood concoctions are all the vogue on social media: mix your sexy grain of choice with your preferred plant milk the night before, chuck it all into a trendy maison jar (Tupperware just doesn’t do it for me), et voilà, you’re good to go for the day.

Of course, there are more mundane options that will give you your fill of food, if not fashion: many supermarket toasts are vegan, so you can easily do a blast from the school day past, embracing in peanut butter sandwiches (spoiler: the ‘butter’ in ‘peanut butter’ isn’t actually, well, butter), or add some healthy pretentiousness by throwing in hummus, rocket, roast vegetables, or the omnipresent avocado. Only the sky (read: Sainsbury’s basics selection) is the limit.

This is Cambridge, though, and what with bedders emptying our bins, porters fixing our lightbulbs, and JCR committees mopping up our vomit, DIY is not exactly the done thing. Thank goodness there are college butteries, bars, and halls to pamper the not-so-independent Cambridge type. I’ve heard rumours of two vegan options at Clare (just the notion of ‘option’ gets me excited in my new vegan existence), and the formerly hidden back passage from the Sidgwick into Selwyn has become a daily thing for me, as I sneak into Selwyn to partake in the daily vegan takeaway goodness.

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Now, not all colleges do a vegan option (and with traditions from a few decades back such as Sunday roasts and Friday fish and chips, what can you expect?) but with little a creativity, you can make a meal out of anything: the salad bars are guaranteed to carry more vegan things than just lettuce, and you can easily make that into an Instagrammable warm salad by adding some of the vegetable sides from the hot food counter (as long as they aren’t prepped in butter, mind you). Quite often there’s a cheeky baked potato option around, made even better by the surprise vegan filling, baked. That said, I do still shed a tear or two when I have to bypass the desserts – fruit salad just can’t compete with St John’s parisienne fruit torte or green tea panna cotta.

However, the excitement of vegan options in colleges turns quickly into mundane munching. My favourite lunch exploration ground is not the chia seeds in my gyp cupboard nor even the salad bar at Selwyn: I bring to you the market.

The new love of my life is the Nigerian lady dishing out Nigerian goodness from morning until around 4pm every day. There’s meat for the carnivores among us (I won’t frown upon you… much), but real culinary bliss comes in the form of a combo box of all the vegan options: mashed yam, spicy rice, a mixed beans casserole, and, at the top of heavenly food pyramid, fried plantain. Saying hello to a food coma and goodbye to post-lunch productivity is absolutely worth it.

The third party in my market love affair is the neighbouring falafel stand. I know, I know, often being vegan means being offered falafels at every imaginable occasion, but you can’t have enough of these ones, freshly fried at the market. Mezze-type salad, hummus, falafel, and pickles get packed into boxes of pure goodness (just remember not to cave in for the halloumi), making a decent contender for the Nigerian option. Who said vegans couldn’t eat anything?

One of my big fears playing the V-card was that lunch would turn into my personal vegan Waterloo, facing the options of a crumbling tummy or a dash of dairy in my lunch box. But I’m proud to say I’ve mastered cruelty-free lunches Cambridge style. Sometimes, the winner really takes it all – quinoa, college, and market goodness