No seriously, still here, still meat free

I didn't really want January to be only about #meatfreeJanuary but as I'm now in the final twenty minutes of meat free January it would seem remiss of me not mention it. Again.

So yes, I'm still a vegetarian. I actually quite like it. It's really not that hard, and despite her best efforts Jud hasn't made me miss eating meat at all. That said, I won't do it forever. Or probably even one more day. Well it's a bit of a faff, isn't it? Especially when you go out somewhere.

My last day as a vegetarian included a Veggie Patty Subway.

This photo is from Subway's website here. It's a wholesome slice of goodness. Apparently.

I just read the ingredient list there and truthfully, I had no clue what I was eating. I mean, it was nice, don't get me wrong. When I ordered it I had fun because the guy asked me did I want him to change his gloves as he'd just made a chicken somethingorother for the customer before me. 'Yes please, that'd be great.' I'm such a vegetarian! Well he offered and and I wasn't about to fall at the last hurdle by getting some chicken juice on my veggie Subway. Dinner tonight was a lovely Moroccan cous cous dish with halloumi cheese (or squeaky cheese as it is more affectionately known). It was very nice, though there was a bit of a tomato shortage which was unfortunate. Definitely could have done with more.

I think the best thing has been trying out different recipes and challenging myself to eat new things. I loved spinach pie and will make it again for sure. Cannellini bean bolognese was delicious too and the chick pea burger thing was definitely worth making again. Actually there were loads of things I loved. Quorn tacos were lovely, and despite a few people on Twitter saying Quorn was rank/cardboard/sick-inducing I liked it. I only had Quorn once the whole month which wasn't too bad and I never, not once, had tofu. Huh. Makes you wonder if I was a real vegetarian at all.

[Quorn is an interesting thing to me. I don't understand it. How does it taste of different types of meat? What's it made of? I read this article and it didn't make me feel any better about it, especially the bit about being 'safe for human consumption'. I never want to see it being made. Just like I never want to go inside an abbattoir.]

So what will I do now? Maybe #meatfreeMonday (or another day by special arrangement)? Maybe.

As for February's challenge? Well Ruth suggested #saladfreeFebruary. It's still on the cards.

Still here, still meat free

Well thank goodness I didn't make any wild resolutions like blogging more, because just three weeks in January and I'd look silly.

So the good news is that I am still meat free. (I didn't want January posts to be all about #meatfreeJanuary but hey ho, when this is your third blog it's what I'm going to write about.) I thought I might forget and eat meat or something but it's been alright and I haven't really be hankering after meat dishes. Rebecca tweeted that she thought stir fry would be loads tastier without the vegetables. Doesn't that just leave fried meat? Where's the flavour in that?! Not to sound all vegetarian worthy or nowt, but there's a whole world of taste I've discovered when your meal is largely just vegetables. I have deduced this is because of the herbs and spices rammed into the dishes. Truthfully, garam masala? Never heard of you beforehand (except are you in tikka masala?). Heck, I even got a basil plant I was using so much those little bunches from Tesco weren't enough.

Tonight I had a lovely chickpea curry. Last week's highlight was bean bolognese. When talking beforehand about the plan with Brian he said that I shouldn't go from meat to meat substitute. Fair enough, where's the challenge in that? So I haven't had anything with Quorn. But when I was round at Karen's I had a piece of 'chicken'. Oh. My. Goodness. Maybe it was just the two weeks meat free talking, but it was so like actual chicken. Made me think it can't be too good for you. What's mycoprotein anyway? Is that something I want to eat or spread on my skin to stop wrinkles? They have an advertising campaign on at the moment and so later in the week Quorn tacos are on the menu. Good luck everybody.

The sad news is that meat free January has resulted in some injuries. Nothing serious I should add. Well aside from nearly losing the sight in my right eye. And it's probably not fair to blame meat free January; these injuries could have occurred while cooking meat dishes.

Injury 1 was a small burn on my fourth finger in an unfortunate tea-towel-not-sufficient-to-act-as-oven-gloves while I was roasting a pepper (before stuffing it with mushrooms and ricotta cheese). I think it hurt more because it was my fourth finger because it's so underused. Oh woe is me.

Injury 2 was a cut to the side of my thumb while washing the food processor blade. Turns out those things don't just cut because they go round very fast, they're also quite sharp. Who knew? Those wee cuts are beasts though, aren't they? They never stop bleeding. I had to use several sheets of kitchen roll to mop up the blood. ('Mop' might be an extreme verb there.)

Injury 3 was the worst. It's the one that made me wonder if I was going to ever be able to see out my right eye again. If you've done what I've done you'll probably have wondered the something similar...chilli in the eye. Oh glory that hurts.

I've always thought I would be quite handy in an emergency situation. I never thought thought I would flail about the place. I'm not the flailing kind. I think I'm quite calm, quite level headed and able to...do something. Well, now I know for sure.

So there I was making tea (chickpeas with tomato and spinach). The recipe said to chop the chillies finely. Obviously before the advent of meat free January I had chopped a chilli finely before. This was not a new experience for me. I knew the chilli would be on my hands, I knew to wash them, I knew not to touch my face or especially my eyes anytime soon.

At this point it's important to remember I had been sick. And I had to slice onions. Those things make your eyes, well more moist, that normal. I knew what not to do, but I did it, I wiped my eye. Although I don't even remember doing it.

Oh, a few moments later I knew I had alright. The burning, searing pain, around what  I believe Olay would call my delicate eye area, told me. It got worse and worse until I couldn't keep my eye open. I ran water on some kitchen roll. There was some temporary relief but it wasn't enough. I ran more water on it. Then through the pain I had an idea. I don't want to overstate it, but it was possibly the best idea I've ever had.

I put milk on the kitchen roll. That's what you're supposed to drink with a hot curry right? Why wouldn't it work with chilli in the eye? Well, I can confirm it worked! I've said it before on here, but I am not a medical practitioner. I know, but it's true. But there I was, in the actual heat of the moment, I came up with a remedy all on my own.

It was at that moment, with a milky eye patch over my eye, I knew I'm alright in emergency situations.*



*Really sorry if it turns out I'm bad in an emergency situation sometime further down the line.

Getting my veg on

It's 4th January and I finally went to the supermarket and got me some vegetables. With being sick the few days I wasn't in much eating form, so I got by on cheese and tomato paninis, baked beans and a jacket potato, and poached eggs. It hasn't been a wildly exciting start to #meatfreejanuary but it has been meat free, which I think you'll agree is the important part of the challenge. (If you click on the link you'll see there's a girl in Finland who is also tweeting using that hashtag. Umm...hiya!)

Tonight I had butternut squash curry, which was a major step up in the excitement stakes. It was really tasty, although turned a bit mushy. So far I haven't really missed eating meat or, as I like to call it, proper food. But I realise that might change. I think there's a real danger of getting bored with vegetables, especially if you're stuck in a panini-beans-eggs rut like I have been.

So I popped along to Tesco and got some supplies for the next few meals.

Tomatoes, spinach, chillies, ginger, cumin, garam masala,  Greek style yoghurt, lemon, red onion, garlic, chickpeas, refried beans, chestnut mushrooms and spring onions. Boom! As they say in veggieland.

It's like a bag from Ready Steady Cook. Well Fern, I'm going to make mushroom and chickpea burgers (thanks Karen for tweeting this idea) and chickpeas with tomatoes and spinach. The refried beans were for emergency enchiladas, you know, just incasies.

I'll let you know how it goes, but you probably already knew that.

Meat free January

Happy new 2012 to you! Fresh from my recent spate of blogging, I thought I'd open my 2012 account with one on the first day to explain why I'm going meat free in January.

It was an idea planted by one of my friends at the European thing I went to in May. Liv is vegetarian and challenged us at the end of the conference to have a vegetarian day at the conference. She pointed to the environmental impact meat production has on the world as reason enough to do it for one day in the week long conference. (You can do your own internet searching on this. I did and there's a load. Here's one called 'Veguary' (think a vegetarian Movember in February) which sums it up quite well here, although the stats are US based. In short though, it seems to me not to be a bad thing to cut down on meat eating. Just like it's not a bad thing to cut down your bottled water consumption when you have a tap with perfectly clean, safe water.) Anyway, it was a very short point Liv made, but she persuaded me and I hoped at the next conference we have vegetarian day.

Cut to a few months later and I found my old diary. I had once tried to be a vegetarian (20th October 1990, fact fans). "Huh. I never really did that."

Then I saw Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall on The One Show. He was on to promote his vegetarian cookbook. No big deal, not really interested. But then he said in research for writing the book he became a temporary vegetarian, I think for three months. "Oh. A temporary vegetarian". (In the movie of my life this will part will have a montage of flashbacks to the earlier incidents.)

Now, here's the important bit, I still might not have done anything about it until I was out for dinner later that week with Karen Photographer for her gallery opening. I mentioned what I had seen on The One Show and Karen decided to join me in a month-long vegetarian adventure (Karen will have her own reasons for the challenge, I think mostly she likes a challenge - see marathon).

As it was already into November, we'd kind of missed the boat on that month, and December is just a crazy month to try to go cold turkey, so to speak. January has the new start feel to it and would give us time to research a little bit about what we need to do.

So that's it really.

Last week Karen and I renewed our pact to do it with a high five. That made it official, cos we're a bit street. And I've marked recipes from my cookbooks and gone to the brilliant BBC Food website. I see that herbs and spices are going to be important. Well vegetables can be a bit boring, can't they? And I'll need to keep myself in fresh vegetables and eat a lot of beans and what not to keep my protein levels up. But I'm happy to report 18 hours in, things are going swimmingly. Mostly because I'm a bit sick and haven't tried to eat anything substantial, but it's nonetheless encouraging.

I wouldn't have tried to do it without any one of those four things: Liv, my old diary, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and Karen (although if I had to grade them, my diary is probably the least important and Liv and Karen the most).

I'll probably put some stuff on here about it, but we'll also be tweeting our vegetarian adventure at #meatfreejanuary. We're not private on there, but if you have an account you can tweet us encouragement. Or try to make us feel better if we succumb to a big dirty burger or a fry, or some ribs. Or a Chinese...

I need to get me some butternut squash or something. Quick.