Just Imagine - Meat Free Christmas?

I am working on an article for Lancashire Life about the vegetarian alternative at Christmas. Imagine the impact in most British homes of the suggestion that this was to be a meat free Christmas. My son would be devastated, my father (if, contrary to his habitual threats, he makes the trip up here again this year) would pack his bag and return to Norfolk. My wife, however, would probably welcome the change and the implicit health benefits of cutting down on animal fats. But then she also welcomes my plan to buy in a whole air-dried ham as part of our festive fare this year.

The imagination requested in the title means more than those reactions though. The two chefs interviewed thus far have offered some clever ideas, and not just theoretical ones but dishes they cooked last year or plan to cook this year. A raw pudding; Christmas (veggie) lasagne; a wild mushroom and Stilton strudel...

My conscience is regularly pricked by the knowledge that we here eat too much meat - in the West in general, and this household in particular. When I cook vegetarian or near vegetarian dishes we are no less satisfied, our systems don't collapse (far from it in terms of what euphemistically we'll call digestive health), and we enjoy them.

Last night the bulk of our main course came from a huge range of veg, home grown and bought in, this being a vegetable soup along minestrone lines (though the stock was chicken from the carcase of Sunday's roast bird). For the first time in weeks I made my own bread, so that accompaniment had flavour. It didn't have imagination though, something that I clearly need to work on if I am crowbar more vegetarian food into our diet.

To fire that imagination I'm going to have to buy some veggie cookbooks - though anything that features brown rice or wholewheat pasta is banned - and visit a veggie restaurant or two, something that apparently today will be less painful than the last time I did so. That was in Germany on business, so quite a while back. The menu was dismal, and the least offensive offering was pasta with pesto. The pasta was in that state of soggy rigor mortis that comes when it has been poorly drained and left at one side for five minutes before serving; the pesto had no zing to it (I suspect it was from a long-open jar not freshly made). I was dining there because a week of large lumps of boiled pig (roughly how I'd define Germany's national cuisine) with boiled spuds had fired me with a need for something else. The pasta and pesto inspired a return to boiled pig.