More than a baked potato

When I was at university in the late 1830s a couple I knew, flatmates of a friend of mine, decided to turn vegetarian. Which is to say she decided, and he acquiesced. Sadly neither of them had a clue about cooking, or diet, and so every meal I saw them eat, and others reported by my friend, consisted of baked potato with a bit of cheese and/or butter. Within a few weeks they both looked distinctly ill, pale and blotchy, irritable, tired... It's such people who in times past gave vegetarian diets a bad reputation.


I hope that the multitudes nowadays turning to vegetarianism and veganism have far better culinary skills. I worry about that, though, and about the rapid rise of ready-meals to cater for new converts to those causes. I've tried a few of them, including one well-known brand name, and have not been impressed. I'll make my own bean-burgers thanks.


The Dear Leader (may her enemies be trampled beneath her feet) and I are not vegetarians, and I for one have no intention of ever being so. But as noted before we eat far less meat than was once the case (in a £120+ shop yesterday I spent £3 on some cooking chorizo, the only meaty item in my trolley). That's for environmental and health reasons, but increasingly for reasons of flavour too, and, linked to the latter cause, thanks to our kitchen garden providing some great ingredients, none of which is steak.


The very excellent Ursula Ferrigno has been a particular inspiration in that regard, her Italian-focused cooking simple and delicious: yesterday the DL picked and blanched some frisee chicory, I cooked and pureed cannellini beans with loads of garlic, lemon zest and juice, olive oil, and a good handful of oregano fresh from the garden, with a few pitted and chopped black olives to garnish it. The warm puree on top of the drained green leaves made a very fine dish indeed. And so simple.


Our health, already good, has I think improved with the change, though as over the last few years we've also increased our exercise levels it's hard to say what has been most important in that regard.


We eat a huge variety of fresh vegetables, salads, herbs and fruits, many of them home-grown but others sourced in SE Asian and Chinese stores as well as three or four different supermarkets. I wonder how many new vegans are just cutting out foods, and not adding to what they ate before? So meat and two over-cooked boring veg becomes two over-cooked boring veg, or worse still burger and fries becomes fries. I know we are lucky to have the space, but as importantly we have the DL with the skills to grow such excellent produce, and me with the experience and curiosity to transform it into a huge range of different dishes. I really hope that this generation of newbie vegans has the oomph to do more than reheat packet-meals, or try to live on baked potatoes - without even the cheese or butter if they're true to their principles.

Thirty of your Eighty-seven a Day

We learned some time back that the five-a-day tag was the health Stasi wimping out. Seven was the original thought, and when it comes down to it, as much variety as you can get in fruit and veg in terms of types and colour has to be good. That simple principle if adhered to would put several thousand nutrition writers out of work btw.

I've not given up meat (nor will I), but have gradually cut back as we're filling up on loads of other stuff. Breakfast chez nous nowadays nearly always includes a homemade smoothie (the bought-in ones tend to be horribly sugary), blitzing fruit (but not too smoothly) with freshly squeezed juice (I have a lime addiction) and some milk/yog. That starts us off with about three servings (what is a serving? Depending on the way the wind blows, 3oz, two tablespoons, a good handful, a decent-sized fruit - not too much science there), but generally seven or eight fruits.

As ever the great HF-W has been a godsend. His RC Veg Everyday tome is brilliant (the Fruit one is I think his worst, but still a good read). He has the knack of providing enough info to let you prepare something, but also to spark ones curiosity about what if I do this, add that...?

One of his ideas I adapted to make a particularly fine and simple pasta sauce: a chili chopped finely after deseeding, three garlic cloves bashed to bits, and a tin of artichokes (yes, tinned) drained, the lot processed with a trickle of olive oil, plenty of paprika and some seasoning until it makes a puree that can be warmed and stirred into spag or pretty much any pasta. A few fresh tomatoes roughly chopped and added at the end brightens it and gives a bit of sharpness. His uses white beans in addition to the artichokes and is primarily a dip that I've also tried. Either way, it is simple and delicious. And a quick way to add another vegetable to the rotating list.

Behind the switch to more veg less flesh lie several factors. It's greener. It's cheaper. We've lost weight. And it promises to be healthier. In 2012 a friend whose lifestyle was not perhaps the healthiest, but who was apparently fit and well, had a fatal heart attack, no warning given. Another very good friend was diagnosed with cancer last year. Along with humour and energy (and medical science), as it fits her beliefs she's fighting it with the power of prayer. Old sceptic that I am while energy and humour and doctors make sense, nutritional changes appeal to me more than the god stuff. Each to their own.

There are of course no silver bullets, and there's no such thing really as a superfood. But as my insides nowadays regularly enjoy the fibrous equivalent of a steam clean, and we surely cannot be deficient in any micro-nutrients, we're hoping it does some good. And even if it doesn't we will have felt far better before meeting our maker. Were he to exist.

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.

Nearly Vegetarian

As posted previously, I am trying to fit in one fish and two vegetarian main courses into our week's eating. Or nearly vegetarian. Like tonight's offering, which will be mushroom risotto, maybe with some peas to give a contrast of textures and some more vegetable matter (yes, I watch QI too, fungi are closer to animals than vegetables, but for culinary purposes let's forget the DNA analysis). Except I have some ham stock to use in making the dish, and am probably going to use up the last little bit of a packet of 'recipe' bacon too.

So the definition is broadening to mainly vegetarian. True moral veggies would be horrified by this. I am not a vegetarian at all, certainly not by belief. I just know that too much meat is not good for us. And is weight-for-weight far more expensive than mushrooms or vegetables other than those wastefully (and given their loss of freshness pointlessly) flown in from Peru, Egypt etc.

The inclusion of bacon as above reminds me of a couple of incidents long past. In my Sixties and Seventies childhood one of our neighbours was a vegetarian. When she came over for a party my parents gave my mother cooked her a vegetarian dish - a pie - specially. Except she later admitted to having included "A little bacon, for flavour." And holidaying in Brittany with another couple who were vegetarians I carefully explained to a waiter in a little restaurant that our friends didn't eat meat. He suggested a salad, which duly came with lardons. When challenged about this he said: "But it is only a small amount."