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| Summer Vegetables 2011 |
One of our goals this year is to eat more vegetarian meals each week. So far we are doing well.
At about week two, we dropped the plan for eating veggie from Friday to Monday and just adopted a very simple, every other day approach. It was really Kim’s idea so I will give her full credit. The main reason was that we all enjoy a Sunday roast and at least this way we would be able to have one every fortnight. It is also a much better method of adapting to change and embedding this as one of our behaviors.
Initially it did take a fair bit of work to figure out simple, easy to cook meals that were nutritious and tasty. We found things like soups, stews, tagines, salads, veggie burgers, omelettes, stir fries to name a few and all tasty alternatives to meat. As we have not removed meat completely from our diets, we don’t have to worry too much about complex proteins on veg days, even though Kim always manages to throw a can of 5 bean mix in with the soups and stews!
Strangely, we have also noticed that when we do eat meat, it is in much smaller quantities and prefer to bulk the meal up with more veg, rice and pasta. Our fruit intake has also increased with small harvests from our apricot, peach and nectarine trees, with a bumper harvest from the old plum tree. I even bottled (preserved) 9 big jars of plums in syrup, as well as 4 apricot and 4 nectarine. We have enough fruit to last the entire winter or until we get sick of it, and we still have the Jonathan apples to harvest! I will preserve some rhubarb in the next few weeks as it is now getting big enough to pick.
Anyway, some of my favorite veggie meals are spicy tomato soup, veggie chow mien, vegetable curry, chick pea and potato curry, Spanish omlettes with mushroom and caerphilly, lentil burgers with beetroot and egg on a home made bread roll and spicy sauce. All are delicious and mouth watering fare that tantalizes my palette.
Now that we are approaching the end of February, I do believe that we have formed this habit and made it one of our behaviours. If you perform something enough times (7 I think), it becomes normal behaviour and looking back you often wonder why we didn’t do this sooner!
Pretty impressive fruit harvest!
How impressive !!!
Congratulations on making it real
We started with mealtess mondays which was easy to remember and then often during the week would make another vegetarian meal. Good for the budget and the middle, as most of our vegetarian meals are lower in calories.
Hi Gav = we have gone veggie for most of the time and have meat as a treat – we have beef stew today, but I bought 400g of beef and will make four portions from that – about 4oz per person, it’s in the stew more for flavour than anything else and that tiny bit of meat cost £3. A bag of soya would feed us for a week’s meals for £1.60 – it’s not difficult to decide to eat less meat. We use a local butcher and can buy 4 sausages, two slices of calves liver, 4 kidneys etc and he doesn’t mind. I usually spend around £6 and he seems just as happy to take my money and all the meat comes within ten miles of where I live – or usually closer
Well that’s good! eating vegetables is a good habit not just only that your body will benefit from it, vegetables can clean your system, decrease the risk of having a disease.
I’m trying to cut down on my meet consumption too eating less of it like Frugal Queen, and more environmentally friendly types of meet such as chicken, rabbit and kangaroo.
You inspired me Gavin this evening and I cooked up a nice veggie pasta and then probably ruined it all by smothering it with cheese. Anyone got any info on the relative emissions/energy/water usage of cheese per kg compared to meat?
Seems it is a trend! We’re in California and after almost a year of raising chickens, it has really raised our awareness of our meat consumption. In other words, the 14 chickens we have wouldn’t go very far with our recently past eating patterns. More meatless meals and less meat in the meals we do eat. We’re fortunate to have a co-op with an abundant supply of locally raised pastured meats when we do opt for meat. Good luck, we enjoy reading your blog!
Lisa
http://www.humboldthen.blogspot.com
Thanks everyone for the comments about going veggie and eating local, ethical and low carbon meat. I knew that I wasn’t the only one out there giving this a go, but I am personally inspired by your comments and efforts.
Gav x