This is National Vegetarian Week and in an effort not to convert you all but just to make you a little more veggie friendly, I thought I’d give my personal take on living a vegetarian lifestyle. If you’re a confirmed meat-eater and couldn’t care less than that’s fine; nobody’s forcing you to read on.
I decided to become veggie when I was 18 years old (a looooong time ago) – actually I wanted to do it when I was much younger than that (but my mum wouldn’t let me) because when I was a kid I remember getting really upset when my grandad told me where lamb chops came from: basically we were driving through the countryside and he shouted out “mint sauce!” whenever we went past a field of little lambs; cue me bursting into tears and not wanting to eat dinner for a week. I think when I first became veggie it was still something of a rarity and I really felt like I was under a lot of pressure to go back to eating meat just to keep my friends happy because at that time I couldn’t eat hardly anything in Burger King, McDonalds or wherever we would end up when we went out after college. Even now I still get a teeny bit frustrated when I go to a restaurant and the veggie option is cheesy pasta or a mushroom burger, purely because there’s so much more to offer and to me it just seems like the staff are being a bit lazy. Or taking too much notice of Gordon Ramsay. When I went to Cornwall last year on holiday the local chippy served veggie burgers but on the menu it proudly stated that they were cooked in beef fat – pointless, much? At least I don’t get quite as much hassle about it now as I used to. My ex would take great delight in scoffing a bacon sarnie right up in my face (yeah, so attractive…) but D’s really good about it – he’s not veggie himself (and never will be, all the time steak and duck are available) but he respects my choices and only teases me about it now and again. It’s just a shame that I still can’t get a decent vegetarian breakfast in the canteen at work; toast or a fried egg sandwich doesn’t really do it for me so I end up having to bring in my own food.*
Having said that, probably the best thing about being veggie is that I’ve had to learn to cook for myself and, if I do say so, I’ve become pretty good at it. I love trying out new recipes or taking traditional ones and putting a bit of a veggie slant on them. My veggie chilli? Amazing! I think it’s had some health benefits too in that I haven’t really put on too much weight over the last few years even though I don’t exercise as much as I should, and I’m not as prone to coughs and colds and other icky bugs as I used to be. I’ve also probably saved a ton of cash from not having to buy pricey bits of meat whenever I go food shopping – so if you’re thinking of going vegetarian just for a little while then that’s a major plus point. Imagine all the chocolate/beer/ice cream (delete as appropriate) you could buy instead.
*Which often gets pinched. I work with thieving gits.
To make these sort of healthy breakfast muffins you will need:
