Food!

[wavestar]

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

Comments

[lanome]

I have an excellent spinach lasagna recipe. I'll send it to you from home.

I also recommend beans.

I found these quesadillas to be tasty.

[haeddre]

I think reducing your meat consumption and trying to ensure that it comes from ethical sources is perfectly reasonable. As an avid meat eater myself, going vegetarian simply isn't an option. But living in LA and having the majority of my friends being vegetarians, I've learned to let go of the idea that meat needs to be found in every meal. I also recently read about a diet where the guy was essential "vegan" all day until dinner, and then at dinner he ate as normal and it helped him vastly improve his health and lose weight, so who knows, there could be some side benefits

[elleblue]

I've been vegan more than six years now, and gaining weight is absolutely no problem ;-)

Your suggestions of meat substitutes are great.. are those sorts of things as easily available in the rest of the US as they are in LA?

[wavestar]

Well, they should be in my fancy pants area of CT, although I'm not sure exactly where shops will keep things like seitan. I'll find it. See, googling Vegetarian recipes was exactly what I didn't want to do, because frankly, as a cookbook goes, the internet is extremely hit or miss. I feel like I need more grounding before being willing to say, yeah, that looks good, or, who do you think you're kidding with that recipe?

[lyndagb]

My friend Nick occassionally blogs recipes, and his wife is veggie so so is he by default

[wavestar]

Thanks. I do like cous cous, although alas Tesco's is out of range for me! Your veg stew sounds a little too cooked for me, in terms of veg - very old school British, all the veg being soft! Even now, half my recipes do tend to start with 'Fry an onion, and stick in a tin of tomatoes..."

[annodomini]

Risotto is a good option; mushroom risotto in particular. Uses broth, though it can be vegetable broth if you want it to be fully vegetarian.

Omelettes or frittatas are good for some protein. Frittatas are nice because you can cook for 2-4 people at once, instead of having to make individual omelettes. I like to make a potato and cheese frittata, or spinach and cheese frittata or omelettes.

Sometimes we will have just a starch (potato, rice, or pasta), a cooked vegetable of some sort (glazed carrots or parsnips, steamed asparagus with butter and dill, grilled eggplant and portobello with balsamic vinegar), along with a salad of some variety (I like spinach, walnuts, dried cranberries, and bleu cheese in a balsamic vinaigrette, or slices of fresh mozzarella, tomato, and basil sprinkled with salt and pepper and drizzled in olive oil).

trilobites and I have been trying to eat fully vegetarian 4 days a week. It's tough sometimes, but once you do that, you really get used to the fact that meat it not actually required to make a good meal. We

[wavestar]

Mmm, risotto, yes, thanks for reminding me - we do make very good risotto, which doesn't need meat. I should experiment with making good vegetable broth. Any suggestions? Also, frittata - I made some last summer in the height of 'what the hell are we doing with all these veggies from the CSA?" season - they're like quiche without the work of the crust. Your salads sound lovely, too, although I take your point on the cheeses. I saw a kit recently for making your own fresh mozzarella; perhaps I should look into it further.

[dreda]

Veg broth is about as forgiving as chicken broth. ;) Our standard is celery-carrot-leeks, with detours into lots of garlic, or mushrooms (for a lovely earthy stock), or something like a savoy cabbage for something sturdier. (Stuff with brassica in it doesn't keep as long, though.) And you only really need to cook it for about a half-hour or so, although longer is rarely bad.

We sometimes also brown/saute the veg first, for a different sort of taste. The virtue of veg broth is, of course, that veg and water are pretty cheap, and so experimenting is not fraught with expensive peril.

[elleblue]

I feel I ought to be well-placed to help with suggestions of lovely veggie food, but really, I can't really imagine cooking nothing but meat, so it's hard to guess at what might sound to you like an unintimidating recipe

[wavestar]

All those things sound lovely, thanks! Also, relatively easy.

It's not that I cook nothing but meat at all - just that the majority of my dinner meals or recipes are centered around some sort of meat. The vegetarian cookbook that intimidates me does so not because it's vegetarian, but because it's full of culturally unfamiliar, if fabulous looking, food. A neighbour just loaned us a much simpler looking cookbook, which I intend to read for inspiration tonight.

You're right that those things you list (mmmm, spanakopita! - but it takes so long to make!) are familiar, but I'd rather not end up replacing too much meat with cheese - I love love love cheese, but one can get ratehr too much cheese in one's diet in a hurry, with such things.

Do you have a particular recipe for coconut milk mashed potatoes? Just potatoes and coconut milk? How much?

[elleblue]

I get the culturally unfamiliar thing n reverse, almost.. I'm so used to a lot of the veggie food from other cultures that I do find it a bit hard when I'm trying to find something exciting to make as a veggie/vegan option for e.g. a banquet menu when most of the mains are based on meat and when vegetables are treated as a side dish