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.