Vegan and Calorie intake

My husband and I are new vegans.  I'm in charge of all of our food and meals. We have been getting enough protien and such, and I get plenty of calories, but I'm having a hard time getting my husband to eat enough calories.  I'm needing some tips on some good high calorie vegan foods/snacks.   He's a teacher, and doesn't have a lot of time to snack throughout the day, so any shack he does eat needs to be high calorie and fast.

Any help is appreciated!

Hi I've been vegan for a couple of months now.  I usually have nuts with dried fruit for a snack.  I also like  roasted chickpeas with a little garlic salt and nutritional yeast on them.  You could always try making your own granola I haven't tried that one yet my problem is I eat to many calories.

I should add something to my post.  My husband also can't eat nuts, or yeast.  He gets migraines and is on a very restrictive diet to prevent them.  I think thats about all he can't have: strictly vegan, and no nuts or yeast. 

Higher-calorie foods are ones with a naturally high oil content.  Things like avocados and olives, for example.  If he can't eat nuts then he could try seeds... sunflower, pumpkin etc.     Add plenty of oil to meals either in the cooking or as a dressing.  The next category are the carbohydrates.....starches and sugars.  Cereal bars, chocolate, muffins or flapjacks & other things with plenty of sugar in them, for example, would be a high calorie snack.    Dates and other dried fruit are very calorie-dense.   More calorific fruits would be bananas and grapes.   Then you go down the route of pastas, potatoes, other starchy vegetables, pulses (legumes) and grains like oats and rice .... big portions with the main meals.

If his diet is very restricted for medical reasons  and you're vegan by choice (?) you may be able to get some expert help from a dietician.

maybe you can make him wonderfully yummy shakes out of rice dream !!! :D

Some of the Clif bars, like the Chocolate Brownie, don't seem to have any nuts in the ingredients. Those are great for energy on the go. 240 calories and 10 grams of protein...and vegan :)

Soy protein powder shakes, with banana and other fruits are also great for a filling meal replacement, or with meals.

Edamame is a really yummy snack that's portable for work. Hummus with falafels and pita bread, Guacamole and baked chips or carrot sticks.

Soups are also great, make them hearty with all sorts of beans and chunky tomato stock. Add brown rice and potatoes to make them even more nutritious and to add more calories.

Pasta or potato salads. Bean burritos with rice, veggies, guacamole and salsa...you can pack them in a container with tortillas on the side to make it less messy :)

My husband is a big, hungry man and also a teacher.  I'm 100% vegan and he's about 95% now.  I know your struggles.  :)

I agree with brighteyes.  My husband loves clif bars.  I drink a protein shake everyday - a cup of light soy milk, a cup of water, soy protein isolate and a frozen banana.  It's about 275 calories and 27 grams of protein.  I constantly change other ingredients to make it interesting (pumpkin and cinnamon, spinach, peanut butter, frozen berries) and higher calorie.  Could he make a smoothie in the morning and store it in the fridge at school?  

I love edamame with a little sea salt for a high calorie snack - or a high calorie meal, I've been known to only have edamame for dinner on occasion.  :)

For my husband's lunch I make sort of a meat replacement salad - a can of chickpeas mashed with some vegan mayo, dill relish, chopped jalapenos and spicy mustard.  He loves it on wheat bread and it's fairly high calorie.   (We call it Fikin Salad because it kind of tastes like chicken salad.)

I also make a really thick, hearty chili using lots of tvp and beans and my husband loves to have it as a dip with tortilla chips. 

I've found a lot of great recipes here but my favorite vegan recipe site is vegweb.com.  There are recipes for just about anything you (or anyone else) can imagine. 

Good luck to you both! 

Thank you for all the suggestions.  A lot of the things you suggested we already do.  I guess its just a matter of getting him to actually eat enough.  He's on a restrictive diet because of migraines, and the medicine he takes for it causes appetite loss. (We're on the vegan diet as a means to start backing away from the medications he's on)  I guess i just need to continue to force feed him more food :-)

Thanks again!

Juice!  You don't have to be hungry to enjoy a glass of fresh fruit or vegetable juice. :)  Get a cheap juicer from a thrift shop or something, and just make a few glasses of juice in the morning and put them in a reusable thermos or bottle that's breifcase-proof.  He'll get almost all the nutrition and calories, but it won't fill him up.

how about cookies from the alternative baking company? they have chocolate chocolate chip cookies that are very high in calories and very yummy. and odwalla juice smoothies? 

or anything homemade that he can bring to work and scarf pretty fast like vegan pizza? or tofu sandwhiches?

also, I don't know how new you are to making vegan meals but one of my favorites is vegan mac & cheese. It's pretty simple. Nutritional yeast flakes, soy milk, margarine and i like to add a little flour for a pastier sauce w/ salt and white pepper.

and i totally love making tacos with what's called "smart ground," and I add more taco spice, olives, onions, and canola or olive oil to the smart ground meat.

and one of my other new favorite foods is pan fried tofu rubbed with any spices you like such as chili powder, white pepper, salt, margarum, sage, anything you like. And I put it on a sandwhich bun with Vegenaise- mayonaise and pickle and tomato. the vegenaise tastes exactly like mayonaise.

Well good luck.  If you haven't tried any of the above, I reccomend the Vegenaise, Smart ground, pan fried tofu-firm tofu, and Nutritional yeast flakes. Nutritional flakes you usually have to get at the health food store. They taste like cheese and they look like fish food flakes. And they have tons of B12 vitamin, that you can not find in any other vegan food there is.