I do most of the cooking at home, and figured it was time to try a few different things out to improve our diet. This week, well - since Sunday - I’ve been cooking vegetarian food for our main meal, and suggesting that we strive to eat veggie at lunch time as well (although Frances is doing less well at this due to a shortage of sandwich shops that cater for veggies near Strathclyde Uni).
So far, so good. Sunday I did a stir fry, using Quorn chunks instead of meat, with a peanut based sauce. Monday was pasta with tomato based sauce: Nothing tricky here, just mixed chopped vegetables with a tin of tomato. Tuesday I made chilli tortilla’s, with sweet peppers, and the chilli sauce all on cream-cheese tortilla’s. Good fun too! 
- Tonight, I made veggie sausage on mash. Tomorrow I’m not quite sure yet, but it’ll involve lots more of the vegetables I have in the fridge. Perhaps a risotto.
We were slightly constrained by the amount of veg available at the supermarket. Rather a pitiful, over-packaged selection as I’ve mentioned before, but we got the basics. Once I find a good veg store things will be much easier!
Of course, I had to start the week-without-meat in suitable style. We were at Noah (here too), and their special was a “surf and turf” of an 8oz rib-eye steak and half a fresh lobster. It’s been ages since I’ve had lobster, and couldn’t resist. Very nice it was too, although loosing a chunk of the tail meat on the floor early on was a bitter blow! I felt bad that I had to check it was “really fresh” lobster (ie. caught locally rather than frozen and flown in), as I’d had a bad(ish) experience with a not-so-fresh lobster (nothing bad, just it didn’t taste as good as I’d hoped). When you’re paying good money for even half a lobster, it’s madness to get served up with something sub-par.
Lunch hasn’t been too bad near where I’m working in Glasgow (Waterloo street, just off Hope street). There are plenty of lunch options, all of which include some nice veggie selections. A Humous and pepper wrap today, and a mozarella and tomato baguette yesterday made for different from the usual sandwiches. I just need to kick the irn-bru habit and get on to something a bit healthier!
I’m certainly not about to turn into a committed vegetarian. I like bacon, steak and lobster far too much to give them up (even though I don’t have them that often either!). It’s just an experiment with different foods, hoping to find some healthier options that would suit just as well as a meat-based version. A chilli with quorn mince is just as nice - in my view - as a chilli with beef mince, and I’d be surprised if there was much more than 2% fat in the veggie version (no oil used) than the meat version which uses oil to brown it down.
Any readers got any pointers for interesting veggie recipies that might be worth a try?
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August 5th, 2005 at 2:17 pm
Will email recipe for Moussaka, which actually tastes better without the meat.
For Lobster, take a trip to Crail, pick your own out of the water butt, they cook it if you want them to and you can either eat it there or take it away with you and it does not break the bank. The lobster and crab boats are all in view whilst you eat - so you know they are fresh, straight from the sea to the pot. Can’t be bad in fact they are better than the ones I had in Boston (the home of crab cakes).