I have a confession to make. I was a vegetarian for years.
Now the fact that I regularly write about which meat dishes I’ve had or cooked means this may come as a surprise.
At a young age my best friend became vegetarian and wouldn’t give me any peace until I did the same. ‘Meat is murder’ was chanted at me and I was regularly slipped pictures of unfortunate cows having their throats slit, so despite being the first to steal the sausages on sticks at parties, the decision was made and I did what every best friend would. Surprisingly my parents, staunch chops on a Sunday eaters, were OK with it. I had a couple of lapses. When I first left home and had to cook for myself, the pot noodle became a late night friend, and as a treat on a Sunday we had the joy of a Fray Bentos pie.
There are pros and cons for both diets. Unprocessed meat is among the most nutritious foods in the world, rich particularly in the vitamin B12 and of course protein plus some lesser known nutrients such as creatine and carnosine.
Humans have been eating meat for millions of years, maybe this is why some people still don’t really know how to deal with vegetarians. I once went on a date with a bloke who offered me a tomato because he ‘didn’t know what I eat’. Other than the lapses I was pretty strict. I only stopped being properly veggie when I really got into food and cooking for other people. I’m not for a second saying that vegetarian food can’t be great because it absolutely can, for me It became time-consuming, working full-time and cooking lots of separate dishes all the time and so I began eating meat again.
Why am I telling you this? Well because basically I was veggie long enough to know how good veggie food and be and also how bad. When I first stopped eating meat there weren’t many alternatives out there. I bought the make your own sausages mixes from Holland & Barrett to start with, a dry mix you added water to. Then along came the likes of Quorn and Linda McCartney and things got better. I still find though that quite often the vegetarian option seems to be an afterthought on the menu. Often I will still try the veggie option, sometimes out of habit, sometimes out of curiosity and sometimes because I know the restaurant uses that dodgy water injected chicken or in fact the restaurant just looks, well, dodgy. I was astounded recently when the Aubergine Roast I ordered as a Sunday lunch option turned out to be just that – a roasted aubergine. I didn’t bother complaining, I suppose it’s what it said on the menu.
I’ve found too that other countries are far better at vegetarian food than the UK. An Asian vegetarian dish for example can be beautifully flavoured. I adore a Palak Paneer, an Indian cheese and spinach dish which I eat a lot. There are some great vegetable currys at restaurants too and most Indian restaurants will offer every curry with a vegetable option now, so things have really improved over the years and going out with a vegetarian is much easier than it used to be.
I’ve now been a meat eater again for years. I’m fairly choosy. I don’t like anything made with offal or if it has a face I can see (I don’t want to look into the eyes of my dinner) and in all honestly, and I reckon most people would say the same, if I had to hunt and kill my for meat I’d definitely be veggie, I’d die on Bear Grylls island. I don’t like to associate meat with an animal, I know that sounds strange. I was once eating a burger and someone made the comment about us all ultimately being animals. That was it, I couldn’t eat the burger.
Thankfully there are some great vegetarian restaurants and cafes in Nottingham now such as the Alley Cafe, another which gets great reviews is Cafe Roya in Beeston. We visited them recently and wasn’t disappointed so catch our review coming soon to NottinghamLive.
So, have you ever tried being a vegetarian or even a vegan and how did you get on and which restaurants win at veggie food and which fail?
By Tanya Louise Raybould
