Feeding myself and, maybe more importantly, others has been a bit hit and miss. For the last 2 weeks a friend from university has been staying with me while on work experience with my practice. I was happy to cook meat dishes for her, or let her cook meat herself, but she chose to go veggie with me (mostly!). There were definitely a few successes, especially veggie chilli with nachos and risotto. Trouble was, it being Lent its also lambing and calving season, so on many days I/we were exhausted and got in late and so didn't have a lot of time or energy for cooking. On one night I don't think I would have eaten at all if she hadn't offered to cook for us! We did resort to beans on toast at least once though.....
Perhaps its just because I am more used to omnivorousness, but cooking vegetarian food seems to have required a lot more thought. There seems to be some debate among vegetarians in particular over how much protein a person needs - there being the suggestion that the average person eats too much protein. But I still think its the hardest part to balance in a vegetarian diet, especially as cheese and eggs, which would be the easiest source, are also relatively high in fat. I don't mind kidney beans and chickpeas etc but not with every meal. There doesn't seem to be the variety of protein sources in a vegetarian diet compared to an omnivorous one.
I am surprised that I haven't been tempted to break the rules or restorted to meat when in a hurry. But I have to say I am a bit bored of the vegetarian diet now. I am sure there are loads of different foods I haven't tried, but I don't think I am experienced enough with a wide enough range of vegetables, herbs and spices. I seem to end up with roughly the same vegetables in everything from curry to pasta dishes, with just a change in sauce and herbs. And it seems pointless to me to put so much extra flavouring in that I can't taste the veggies. I am still enjoying the experimenting, when I have the time and energy, but I am glad its the final week now.
My parents and younger brother are coming for the Easter weekend. I'll be breaking Lent on Easter Sunday with a roast dinner with the family, but plan to feed them vegetarian main meals on Friday and Saturday evening. It will be interesting to see how that goes down. Only 3 more days to go!
Wednesday 27 March 2013
Sunday 24 March 2013
Vegging Out...
...by which I mean being vegetarian and eating out. This was something I was really keen to try, and I am glad to say that I've had quite a range of experiences, both good and bad.
The first was in Weatherspoons in Carmarthen, interestingly with 2 vegetarian friends, on a Friday evening when we were all knackered and couldn't be bothered to cook. The intention was to just nip in for a quick bite before a DVD night. Unfortunately we chose to pop in on St David's Day, not a good choice in Wales! So it was incredibly busy and rowdy and service was understandably slow. The menu was disappointing in two respects - firstly for the very small number of vegetarian meals, and secondly for making them incredibly difficult to find! There was no dedicated vegetarian section of the menu, so I had to search each meal type, and within that the "V" for vegetarian was smaller than the rest of the type font and crammed in with nutritional info so they were really hard to spot. Eventually I chose a pasta dish which was....fine. Edible, nothiing wrong with it, but utterly unexciting. I had a similar experience on a work meal out with a drugs rep, at The Caraway - easier to identify the meals, but only maybe 5 in total on an A3 size menu. Nando's on a hen do (hen's in a chicken restaurant, classic!) was much the same - chose the spicier option simply to make it taste of something. The vegetarian breakfast at the hotel the next morning was very good, the only vegetarian item being a veggie sausage which was quite tasty.
A couple of weeks ago I went to the Veterinary Christian Fellowship Conference in Derbyshire. I've been going for years, all through being a student, and the food has always been really good (and highly plentiful!). Being a vegetarian was not such a great experience - fairly standard fayre of nut roasts and so forth, served significantly after everyone else on the table and already covered in sauce or gravy without being asked if I wanted it. I now its a conference and they have to stick to a budget, but I do think they could have done better.
Overall I am quite disappointed by my experiences. Most of the options seem to be pesto and/or butternut squash and/or sweet potato based with pasta. We seem to have moved on from the ubiquitous mushroom risotto, but it seems good quality tasty vegetarian meals are still beyond the average family restaurant chef. Maybe there just aren't enough vegetarians around to make it worth being more creative with vegetarian foods in restaurants? Or they just don't go out much for fear of not finding something worth eating! I have a week left to go, so if possible I'm going to try the vegetarian restaurant in town.
The first was in Weatherspoons in Carmarthen, interestingly with 2 vegetarian friends, on a Friday evening when we were all knackered and couldn't be bothered to cook. The intention was to just nip in for a quick bite before a DVD night. Unfortunately we chose to pop in on St David's Day, not a good choice in Wales! So it was incredibly busy and rowdy and service was understandably slow. The menu was disappointing in two respects - firstly for the very small number of vegetarian meals, and secondly for making them incredibly difficult to find! There was no dedicated vegetarian section of the menu, so I had to search each meal type, and within that the "V" for vegetarian was smaller than the rest of the type font and crammed in with nutritional info so they were really hard to spot. Eventually I chose a pasta dish which was....fine. Edible, nothiing wrong with it, but utterly unexciting. I had a similar experience on a work meal out with a drugs rep, at The Caraway - easier to identify the meals, but only maybe 5 in total on an A3 size menu. Nando's on a hen do (hen's in a chicken restaurant, classic!) was much the same - chose the spicier option simply to make it taste of something. The vegetarian breakfast at the hotel the next morning was very good, the only vegetarian item being a veggie sausage which was quite tasty.
A couple of weeks ago I went to the Veterinary Christian Fellowship Conference in Derbyshire. I've been going for years, all through being a student, and the food has always been really good (and highly plentiful!). Being a vegetarian was not such a great experience - fairly standard fayre of nut roasts and so forth, served significantly after everyone else on the table and already covered in sauce or gravy without being asked if I wanted it. I now its a conference and they have to stick to a budget, but I do think they could have done better.
Overall I am quite disappointed by my experiences. Most of the options seem to be pesto and/or butternut squash and/or sweet potato based with pasta. We seem to have moved on from the ubiquitous mushroom risotto, but it seems good quality tasty vegetarian meals are still beyond the average family restaurant chef. Maybe there just aren't enough vegetarians around to make it worth being more creative with vegetarian foods in restaurants? Or they just don't go out much for fear of not finding something worth eating! I have a week left to go, so if possible I'm going to try the vegetarian restaurant in town.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)