At the turn of the year I announced to my lad that I am buying less meat. Mainly it's a budget thing, veg and pulses cost a lot less than meat, are tasty, filling, and go a long way. Anyway, he announced that that was fine, he was going vegetarian. He's 13, whether it sticks or not, I don't know, but he's stuck to it so far and good on him.
It's also been good for me to have to shake up our meals a little bit, it's so easy to get stuck in a rut with food and make the same stuff all the time.
We've had some really tasty meals. Pasta with home made arrabiata sauce and some salad (Ally had Quorn meatballs in his).
A lovely tarka daal (recipe by Jack Monroe - https://cookingonabootstrap.com/2016/12/29/tarka-daal-vegan/):
A nice veggie fried rice with grilled halloumi and veg:
Baked eggs with peppers, onions, and tomatoes:
This super quick and easy vegetable and quinoa laksa:
Minestrone and not-meatball stew:
But my favourite so far was a made up beany chilli that I chucked together last week:
2 x tins chilli beans
1 x tin baked beans
1 x tin pinto beans
1 x tin black eye beans (please do not confuse with black eyed peas, that makes chill.i.am instead of chilli)
1 x tin chopped tomatoes
a few squirts of tomato puree
1 tsp ground coriander
1 tsp ground cumin
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon (or pop a cinnamon stick in, but don't eat it!)
seasoning
the crushed chillis/cayenne/chilli powder part of it is up to you, make it as hot as you like :)
Just simmer it all together for 20-30 mins gently, just to reduce the liquid a little and make it a bit thicker, check the seasoning and the spice level, then serve.
We had it with steamed rice and a salad of spinach, tomatoes, red onion, coriander, and a bit of salt and lime juice. Very tasty, will definitely make it again. I'm sure it would freeze nicely too, but we scoffed a huge pot of it over a couple of days so it never made it that far...
As our meals are all vegetarian now (although I do still have small meat binges now and again, my boy doesn't though!) so rather than me cart a pile of fruit and veg back from the supermarket every week I decided to get a local veg box delivery. I went with Pillars of Hercules (http://www.pillars.co.uk/) because I really like them, good fresh produce and their farm shop and cafe is great if you are ever out their way, do check it out.
This is our first box from Pillars, delivered today:
It's a great size for us, I was worried it would be too much but as we are eating more veg now it's great. We have:
A few HUGE potatoes
beautiful dirty carrots
a bag of curly kale (a fave of mine!)
a lovely dirty neep
some leeks
a few nice big onions
2 long pointy red peppers
a lemon
a few oranges
a few tomatoes
a cabbage
It costs £15 a week and is delivered on a Thursday to us which is perfect. I plan our meals for the week on a Thursday and do the shopping on a Friday or Saturday. I will have to get a few extra bits and bobs, but I would rather spend £15 a week on fresh, tasty, organic veg, most of which is grown locally, than £15 on supermarket meat. we'll see how we get on.
If you want any recipes of any of the pictures of our veggie feasts, do shout. I tend to make things up as I go along but can give you a fair idea of where to start.
Big veggie love!
Jill xx
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