Food!
Following a visit to the excellent Saturday Farmer's Market in New Haven this weekend, I'm formulating more completely a plan to eat more ethically and responsibly that I've been pondering for a while. I would love to buy nothing but free-range, locally raised, shiny happy ethical meat, and I'm fortunate enough to have a source of appropriate lamb within the family, but chicken, pork, beef, etc are all sourced through farmer's markets and local sellers - ie, expensive! I grew up on a farm raising animals for meat, in a very meat-eating family, and would definitely miss meat too much to move to vegetarianism, although I'm still working out how I feel morally about humans eating meat - it's not crystal clear.
However, it is clear that if we were to eat meat less often, then affording more expensive meat when we did eat it would be a more reasonable proposition. Although I have tried to decide, previously, that one meal a week would be vegetarian, in practice it doesn't happen so often, because we don't plan our meals in advance, and don't have very many go-to vegetarian recipes. We eat fish or seafood once every week or so, sometimes more often, when tuna casserole and shrimp overlap, for instance. What I need, obviously, are good, simple, reliable vegetarian recipes - we have a lovely vegetarian cookbook that intimidates the heck out of me and in the internet at our fingertips, but recommendations from those one knows are always best! So, oh wide world of people I know - what do you cook that doesn't have big lumps of meat in? Things like broth, boullion or base, and even optional bacon are fine, but I want to move into less meat-based cooking. Vegetable stir-fry, quiche, veggie pasta tosses and fried rice are currently my repertoire, give or take. Enlighten me!
However, it is clear that if we were to eat meat less often, then affording more expensive meat when we did eat it would be a more reasonable proposition. Although I have tried to decide, previously, that one meal a week would be vegetarian, in practice it doesn't happen so often, because we don't plan our meals in advance, and don't have very many go-to vegetarian recipes. We eat fish or seafood once every week or so, sometimes more often, when tuna casserole and shrimp overlap, for instance. What I need, obviously, are good, simple, reliable vegetarian recipes - we have a lovely vegetarian cookbook that intimidates the heck out of me and in the internet at our fingertips, but recommendations from those one knows are always best! So, oh wide world of people I know - what do you cook that doesn't have big lumps of meat in? Things like broth, boullion or base, and even optional bacon are fine, but I want to move into less meat-based cooking. Vegetable stir-fry, quiche, veggie pasta tosses and fried rice are currently my repertoire, give or take. Enlighten me!