Veggie update

Last year I determined to give up eating meat. I know I made this decision last summer, but I had no idea when. Until I realized I had announced my decision on this blog. July 10th I gave up meat, and I did not notice I had hit a year as a veggie. A whole year, wow. In fact this is significant for 2 reasons. Not only have I not eaten meat in all that time, I have also not visited the US for 12 whole months either (well more like 14 now). Something I plan to rectify with a trip next month.

When I first made the decision a lot of people asked me things like "how long are you going to be veggie for?", a little insulting perhaps, but I made it to my one year anniversary. WooHoo!!! When I first told my family they were all concerned that I would somehow become malnourished due to a lack of meat, but I have survived.

So some of my tips and tricks. First off supermarkets are not the best place to shop for veggie meat substitutes. Quorn is taking over and while some of their food tastes fine (like their southern fried "chicken" burgers, and the lemon pepper fillets are ok), there are lots of better alternatives. So some of my favorite foods:

• Realeat vegiemince
  
• Realeat "chicken" pieces
• Redwood Vegi-deli Cheatin Chicken Style Pieces
• Redwood Cheatin Choritzo Style Chunks, great in pasta
• Fry's Vegetarian Traditional Style Burgers, the only burgers that do not taste foul.
• Fry's Vegetarian Golden Crumbed Schnitzel

The only place I can get most of these things is in Holland and Barrett, or GNC. While Holland and Barrett in Southampton is a 30 minutes walk from where I live it often has very little stock. The Eastleigh or Winchester branches are better stocked. Supermarkets are not so good for shopping at.

My next challenge is my two week holiday to visit my brother in San Francisco. The US is not well known for being a good place for vegetarian's, although I am sure it is not as bad as I fear, and San Francisco is pretty open to alternative life choices, so I am sure I will be fine. I'll let you know when I get back.

Take care
Alasdair

Can cook, wont cook.

I've written before about how hard it can be to eat when you are on your own. Cooking for two is easier than cooking for one. You have two people to share the workload; be it the cooking or the washing up. Many ingredients are setup for meals for two or more, not one. So you cook for two nights, and that involves reheating and it is the same meal two nights in a row. Yuck.

Another problem with cooking for one is that whenever you invite people round for dinner it becomes a much bigger chore. Many of my friends are now married so cooking for one goes to cooking for three, or even five. There is a much bigger difference in difficulty when moving from one to three or more people. More prep work, more washing up (lots more), and so on. It takes me a while to pluck up the courage to arrange a dinner party.

The final thing about cooking that is hard work is this. If I feel down I do not feel like cooking, so I do not cook or eat properly. If I am enjoying work I have a habit of working late (in fact sometimes even when I'm hating work I work late which is very sad), in these cases I get back from work at 8pm or later at which point I'm too tired to eat properly.

So as you can see eating properly is not easy for me. All these behaviours are learned, and bad, but I still have them. I could either change them, or I could implore scientists to invent a food pill. Guess which I am hoping for.

Alasdair

Eating out veggie style

Yesterday I went out to dinner with my ex-flatmate (and her boyfriend) who live in Kingston-Upon-Thames. Our first choice was to go to the New Inn on Ham Common. So we phoned them up to ensure they had veggie options on their menu. They said yes, so we set out for the pub; to find the menu only contained one vegetarian main option. Roasted peppers with rice cakes, hardly appetizing.

So we decided instead to go to the Riverside Vegetaria. It was amazing. Everything on the menu is vegetarian, most of it is vegan and gluten free. It was the best meal out I have had in a long time, and to cap it all I had more that one option.

Bring on the revolution :)

Alasdair

Upated: To correct spelling

Progress being a Veggie

In a comment to my Marwell post Tim asked for an update on my Vegetarianism. Well the good news is I am still a Vegetarian. I do not eat meat. This is not a fad, this is a life choice.

Hmm, you might think I get this a lot :D

As a general rule I have not had too many problems with the switch. Cooking at home is no more difficult than it was before (which is hard, more on that later), eating out is generally not a problem, and my friends have been very supportive. I did almost order a Chicken Dansak as a takeaway a week or two ago, but recovered well.

The main challenge is that a group of us from work go out for pub lunch once or twice a month and that is a challenge. Pubs seem to have problems with having vegetarian menus. Typically they are good a fish dishes (but that is no good as I do not eat fish), but most of the veggie dishes contain melted cheese :(. So far they have all been very good and have either removed the cheese (one seemed a little put out, but the menu did not indicate that cheese might be on the pasta dish; it was not even listed as a pasta bake), and failing that I have had success at ordering cheese sandwiches even when it is not on the menu (although I should probably ask if the cheese is vegetarian).

So what is it I find difficult about cooking? Well motivation is one issue, but a greater one is that it is simply hard to cook when you are cooking for 1. Rolls come in packs of 4, so do veggie burgers (this is enough for two means perhaps), but the rolls go off if not eaten quickly. When I cook properly (burgers is not properly), which is once a week I make enough for a few days, so I live from reheating.

Next week I am off to Oxford for a course, so my next challenge will be to see if I can survive a week at Oxford not eating meat. I might have to go and get sandwiches from the local Sainsburys rather than eating the provided food. Oh well at least D&G will be there for me.

Alasdair

Humane Meat, hmm

So I've been a little lax. I haven't been reading my comments, in my defense I don't get a huge number. This time it was from my friend Tim who recently emigrated to Canada.

In response to my decision to cease eating meat he asked "How about meat that is reared 'ethically' or humanely etc?". As I said before I stopped eating fish a long time ago and I am often asked this exact question. Recently someone said "you've got it all wrong, you should eat farmed, or line caught fish", now what he meant by this was "I like fish, I accept that fishing is ecologically bad, so I'll only eat farmed or line caught fish". This is fine (well I object to the idea that farmed fish is ecologically bad, but I'll leave that for the moment), it is his decision. My decision is that not eating fish is the correct and best solution.

So I have extended my views on fish to cover all animals. Yes, if you have to eat meat it is better not to buy the Tesco £2 chickens, and opt for organic, humanly killed 'ethically' reared meat, this is better because the chicken will taste better and almost certainly be better for you. The chicken probably had a better life too, but for me I would prefer not to end its life so I can consume it.

The decision as to whether or not to be vegetarian, vegan is a personal one and I have no interest in forcing other people to adopt my view, if people want to that is fine, if they don't that is also fine.

Alasdair

Farewell to Meat

So today I made a decision that has been a long time in coming. I am not going to eat meat anymore. So why am I making this decision?

Well I stopped eating fish a long time ago. My reasons being:

• I do not like the way fish are killed
• We do not fish in a sustanable way
• Fish farming is bad for the environment
• Fish often has high levels of heavy metal in them
• When carniverous fish are farmed we need yet more fishing to feed them (think cod farming)

but I was still eating animals. This was a little hypocrytical to be honest, but I liked meat more than fish anyway.

So during lunch yesterday we were talking about dolphin fishing in Japan. Someone said that dolphins get dragged (while still alive) from the water and along the street, screaming all the way. School children walk past oblivious to the animals plight, they are used to it. Whether this is true or not it made me feel sick. One of the other people then started describing how cows are slaughtered in some abertoires and to be honest, it was not any better.

It was at this point I realized how hypocrytical I was. I did not want to know about what went on because it was easier to pretend it did not happen and eat the meat.

So today I went to the dolphin for lunch and while queueing up to order I realized I could not face having any meat, so I did not have any. In fact I still do not think that was the moment I made the decision, I was still toying with the idea. Until this evening. I was called by some friends who invited me round for dinner. It was at that moment I made the decision.

So from today no more meat will pass my lips. Well I hope so, I have a bad memory for these things, so I might forget from time to time, and I struggle to remember that fruit pastilles and similar have gelatine in them.

My friend Joe became a vegan recently, for different reasons. He blogged about them here.

Alasdair