I'M BACK!

HELLO! My goodness it's been a while. I'm so sorry to have left you in the lurch but I've been gallivanting around California! I have lots to blog about and will catch up in due course. Tomorrow is World Vegetarian Day which is exciting. Be sure to cook up a super tasty meat free meal!

Finding the V - Restaurants.

I like eating out, I consider it a treat and I really look forward to it. Chain restaurants, cafes, pubs etc, I love browsing menus. Sometimes I can scan up and down a menu all I want, only to find a very limited choice of vegetarian options.

Sometimes there will be a helpful, obvious 'V' by a meal description which makes a world of difference as a vegetarian diner. It means I can be sure what i'm eating is suitable for my diet and makes me much happier. 

In this day and age it's really a poor show to have barely any vegetarian options. Much as I like pasta and as much as I like mushrooms, I AM TIRED OF MUSHROOM PASTA. Someone who is a normal meat eater surely wants a bit of choice too, they might not always want a meal including meat. As I've touched on in a previous post, some people seem to think vegetarians only eat salad so perhaps restaurant chains are just playing it safe with offering a pasta choice, or a veggie burger. There is so much you can do to make amazing vegetarian friendly meals, just look at the Bistro 1847 menus for an insight into some well thought out, super tasty meat-free food.

Obviously I know there are more people in the world that eat meat, that don't. So I would never expect a menu to be half meat free, half including meat but there could be more choice for veggies.

I recently saw a menu where nearly every dish had a gluten free option too so it seems restaurants don't mind making the effort to prepare food slightly differently yet still they seem to think vegetarians only eat mushrooms. If you were a vegetarian who wasn't keen on mushrooms you'd be pretty stuck sometimes when eating out!

I just did a quick browse of the menus in some popular restaurants - Frankie and Benny's, Chiquito, Nando's, Pizza Hut and Harvester. I was looking at the main meal options, I know these restaurants offer different styles of food - Mexican, Italian, gastro pub etc. So their veggie options will reflect that. Frankie and Benny's didn't fare too badly with 2 pasta options, 4 pizzas, 1 burger and 1 wrap to choose from, however strangely, they didn't offer a vegetarian salad main meal! Chiquito offers one veggie option in nearly every category such a a veggie burger, wrap, fajita, salad, 2 quesadillas. Not the worst but some of the options are lacking in imagination. 

If you don't like halloumi you're stuck. I like Nando's and despite halloumi and mushroom not being a groundbreaking combination, it is tasty and I do really like it. Nando's has this to say on preparing vegetarian dishes. It also offers a beanie and mixed veg option. Pizza Hut doesn't have anything big and fancy vegetarian wise but pizza is always good so to have 4 to choose from isn't too bad, the pasta dishes leave a lot to be desired though from when I've eaten them. Harvester stays very safe with their veggie options, they even do a veggie sausage and mash. A cauliflower tart, veggie burger and stuffed peppers. You don't expect anything amazing from basically a pub but at least there are a few choices.

Of course there is choice out there for none meat eaters, some restaurants are better than others at providing good vegetarian food but i'm sure it's a lot better now than it was 20 years ago. I will talk about some of my fave vegetarian places to eat out at on the blog soon. Let me know what your experiences are eating out as a vegetarian, do you think there is enough choice or have you been stuck with barely any options?

Addicted to chillis.

I love spicy food, you've probably noticed that a lot of the things I eat have got chilli in there in one form or another. Who says life without meat should be bland?! There are so many ways you can pep up average sauces, risottos etc with a kick of chilli! I know spicy hot food isn't to everyone's taste but there are mild, smokey, fruity chillis available to suit every taste bud.

My family have been using dried chillis from South Devon Chilli Farm for a while and I thought I'd talk to through some of our favourites. 

The piquin

These chillis are really little, but don't be fooled, they are still pretty hot! We have these in a chilli grinder which makes it super easy to add to pasta sauces, risotto etc. They are easy to chop or crumble and because they are so small, it's a great way of adding a little kick to a family meal. You can get them here and the chilli grinder here.

The chipotle morita

A funny looking dried chilli, might not look that appetising but it will add a lovely subtle smokey flavour to your meal. I used these when I made enchiladas as featured in my What I Ate This Week #2. These are great in veggie chillis or if you wanted to make your own salsa. Oh I feel hungry just thinking about them! I try to cut one up finely using scissors. One of my faves. You can get them here.

The de arbol

A pretty traditional looking chilli right here and one we use often. I cut them up using scissors, you can decide if you want all the seeds in or not but one is plenty for a family meal. We used two in my Black Bean Tacos which fed 5 and it blew everyone's heads off! My lips went numb so be warned, they are not for the faint hearted. Because they are dried, they keep really well so you can always just use half a chilli if you didn't want everyone puffing and panting round the dinner table complaining they can't feel their tongue. You can get them here. 

The ancho mulato

These are actually twice as big as the chipotle morita and very mild. they'll just give a hint of chilli which sometimes, is all you want. You could used these to make mild enchiladas or a veggie chillie. You can get them here.

So there you have it! Plenty of options when it comes to dried chillis. A bag of each chilli will last you ages and really make a difference to meals. It's quite fun to experiment with different combinations or adding chilli to things you might not usually think of. Let me know if you've tried any of these or what meals you like to add chilli too. You can find South Devon Chilli Farm on Twitter here. 

Bon voyage!

Hi everyone, I am currently on holiday in America for two weeks (YAY EXCITING) but I have scheduled two posts to go live whilst I am away. Hopefully I will still post the What I Ate This Weeks using a tablet, it should be quite something eating out everyday! I'm excited to see what California has in store for me and my vegetarian brother. 

Keep an eye out for the scheduled posts the next two Wednesdays.

What I Ate This Week #3

Not a great start to the week with the burgers but the freezer had defrosted so we had to eat up bread rolls and burgers! The orzo dish is so easy and quick to make and is very tasty, I do love most things with garlic in them. The butternut squash was lovely roasted too.

Vegetarian soya burgers with tomato relish and salad.

Pasta with a Loyd Grossman tomato and wild mushroom sauce.

Orzo with chickpeas, chilli, garlic and lemon.

Risotto with roast butternut squash, mushrooms and peppers. 

Nando's halloumi and mushroom pitta with chips.

Homemade ciabatta then pasta with tomato, peppers and Italian herbs.

Baked potato, Sainsburys Indian lentil and spinach quarter pounder, roast parsnips, carrots and broccoli.

RECIPE: Black Bean Tacos

I've just watched The Lego Movie so "TACO TUESDAYS" is in my head. If it's got your tummy grumbling then it's a good time to make them! This is another recipe from Nigel Slater's Real Fast Food (I promise it's not the only recipe book my family uses, it's just new at the moment so we're finding recipes we want to try in there). 

The original recipe includes instructions to make your own tomato chilli salsa buuuuut we cheated and decided not to make it and got a shop bought one. Naughty.

To serve four people.

2 x 400g tins of black beans, haricot beans or black-eyed beans, drained and well rinsed.

2 x 400g tins of chopped tomatos

3 tablespoons olive oil

1 bay leaf

2 onions, sliced

2 big cloves of garlic, finely sliced

2 teaspoons ground paprika

1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper

1 tinned jalapeño pepper, seeded and finely chopped 

(we used a dried chilli we grew ourselves)

Salt

Ground black pepper

2 teaspoons white wine vinegar

1. Put the rinsed beans in a pan with a tablespoon of the oil and the bay leaf and cover with water. Bring to the boil and simmer for 10 minutes.

2. Warm the remaining oil in a shallow pan, add the onions and cook till soft and golden. Add the garlic, paprika and cayenne, cook till garlic is soft, about 4 minutes. 

3. Add the tinned tomatoes and chilli, simmer for about 10 minutes. Drain the beans and add to the sauce. Taste and season with salt, pepper and wine vinegar. (We didn't end up using the wine vinegar as it tasted fine without). It's up to you!

4. Warm the taco shells in a hot oven for 3 - 4 minutes.

5. Spoon bean mixture into the taco shells, top with cheese/salsa/guacamole/whatever you fancy! Then get eating.

It was easiest to serve them in a dish so they could stand up, it meant the mixture didn't all just fall up. These were really messy to eat but super tasty. We put extra chillis in and I think it made my lips go numb it was so hot! Definitely have kitchen roll or wipes to hand for the mess. Heating the tacos in the oven makes them a bit softer so your taco might fall to pieces if you don't eat it fast with the hot bean mixture in them! I had cheese and garlic mayo on mine. You can eat about 3 or 4. Let me know if you make this, it's quick and easy to make without lots of fancy ingredients. 

GUEST POST: Kayleigh on lifestyle adjustments as a vegetarian

Today you have a special post for you to feast your eyes on!  I'll let my guest take it from here...

Hello guys, Kayleigh here! Cressida asked me to write a guest post for her blog and I jumped at the chance to write about a topic dear to my heart – vegetarianism. Despite Cressida being an all-round lovely person, who anybody would want to be friends with, I would say that it was our joint advocacy of the meat-free lifestyle that really made us bond when we first met. This was back in the heady days of sixth form college, and I remember jumping over the table in our A Level English class to give her a cuddle on National Hug a Vegetarian Day – it was nice to have somebody to share a slightly silly national day with!

The primary difference between myself and Cressida would be that she is a lifelong veggie, whereas I stopped eating meat and fish when I was about 15 years old. I was a moody teenage goth at the time, more interested in skulking around with my friends than exploring any culinary endeavours, and so I had to seriously re-think my eating habits. Looking back, it is hard to express just how much less there was to offer then compared to these days. I must have spent my first meat-free month living off chewy “chicken” nuggets and cheese and onion pies. If you’re only looking for a replacement for meat, food can get pretty boring. It was when I started to develop my cooking skills that I found I was trying more and more foods I had never eaten before – and I loved them!

My first big discovery was spinach. I had never touched a leaf in my life before turning vegetarian. My only knowledge of this food was that it was the tinned green stuff Popeye threw down his throat in the cartoons. Now, Popeye is great and all, but it didn’t exactly entice me to eat the stuff. I first tried it in a Spinach and Ricotta Cannelloni, a staple of my early vegetarian diet and still a favourite dish of mine. Considering how much spinach I eat these days, I cannot believe I had never tried it before giving up meat. It’s fantastic in salads instead of lettuce, added to quiches, pasta and curries, and it’s an amazing source of iron and vital vitamins – it truly is a superfood! Throughout my vegetarian journey I have also discovered, chickpeas (falafel is now probably my favourite food), halloumi and tofu, among many others.

However, not only did I begin to consider more foods I had never eaten before, I also now had to re-think foods I had previously eaten. Unfortunately, becoming a vegetarian does require some adjustment regarding foods you would think nothing of in the past, but once you’re aware of the changes you need to make, it’s all plain sailing. My biggest barrier was cheese. Wow, don’t get me started on how much I love cheese. But when you’re veggie, you have to check hard cheeses, as part of the process of making it involves adding rennet, which is a stomach enzyme from calves. The biggest problem is that most non-veggies are totally unaware that this is even a thing, and will proceed to offer cheeses like parmesan to you, which is why you’re likely to come across angry vegetarians in Italian restaurants.

For somebody with a sweet tooth like mine, sweets were another disappointing adjustment. I don’t eat any sweets containing gelatine (derived from pigs and cows) which includes most marshmallows and, most upsetting for me, liquorice. There are however several veggie friendly brands if you look for them. I once came across Halal gelatine-free Haribo in a pound shop, and it’s embarrassing how many bags I bought. Being vegetarian does mean you develop a very keen eye when shopping for food!

I’m lucky to have a very supportive family, and most days of the week I share vegetarian meals with my parents. They now eat Quorn and meat-free meals more than they eat meat, which is great. It’s all about open-mindedness. Once you begin to reconsider how you eat and stop thinking within the lines of “meat, potatoes, and veg”, you begin to discover there’s so much good and healthy food out there. So I urge any meat eaters curious about the vegetarian diet to think beyond meat substitutes, and try a vegetable or pulse based meal at least once a week. Your taste buds will thank you, trust me!

Thank you so much Kayleigh for writing a great post for thevegetariangirl. You can find her on Twitter here. It really does ring true the phrase "if you're only looking for a replacement for meat, food can get pretty boring". There is so much more to a vegetarian diet that Quorn or salad (nice as those foods are)! Mentioning spinach has made me want to include it in meals more often as I rarely have it. I'm now on the hunt for vegetarian Haribo again. 
Let me know if you find it! Hug A Vegetarian Day is on Friday 26th September 2014.

Coming soon!

Hi there! Hope you are enjoying reading my blog. I am really enjoying working on it. Coming soon are some guest posts, more recipes and reviews. I am going to California for two weeks very soon so will schedule some posts so you have something to read! The What I Ate This Week posts should be interesting whilst i'm away. I'm a little nervous about finding veggie food in America but i'm sure it'll be fine. I've had American relatives in total disbelief that I don't eat meat before!

I would love to know if you've decided to make anything similar using my blog as inspiration or to hear your views of vegetarians eating fish or if you've had a near miss with being served a meat dish when you don't eat it!