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Sunday 28 December 2014

Christmas - New Year!

So, here we are in the lull time between the excitement of Christmas and the expectation of a new year.  My Christmas Day was spent with family; they eating turkey, pigs in blankets(!) and chipolatas and ... yes, sharing my nut roast!

I have to say it was a triumph.  The recipe I used was from an old Cranks recipe book as follows:
1  medium sized onion
1oz/25g butter
8oz/225g mixed nuts
4oz/100g wholemeal bread
1/2pt/300ml vegetable stock
2tsp/10ml yeast extract
1tsp/5ml mixed herbs
Salt & pepper to taste

Basically you just blitz the nuts and bread finely.  Chop and saute the onions.  Boil the stock and yeast extract.  Combine everything.  Place in a greased shallow baking dish and bake at 180 degrees/Gas Mark 4 for 30 mins until golden brown.

It looked a little like very dark stuffing and not particularly appealing but tasted absolutely delicious!


Around our dining table jokes and stories are shared, old and new.  Every year we await a mention of the RAF by my father and father-in-law (both of whom did National Service) and my mum shares a tale of a friend who would fry left-over Christmas Pudding with his cooked breakfast.  It's our tradition to share these stories and Christmas is all about tradition.  New Year, on the other hand, is all about resolutions and new beginnings.

My resolution, as always, is to be a better person.  I have already resolved to write this Blog for a year and, as part of that, aim to try out more vegetarian recipes.  Happy New Year and watch this space!




Sunday 21 December 2014

Christmas Dinner

"What do you eat on Christmas Day?" is the question I am asked every year.  I would love to come out with some exotic menu but usually mumble something about having all the vegetables and trimmings without the meat.  It is true that there is so much to eat on Christmas Day that I don't feel I miss out at all.  Occasionally I have added a cooked Camembert as a quick and easy "main".  This year, however, is going to be different!  For the sake of writing this blog, I am going to make the quintessential vegetarian meal ... Nut Roast!  I have only eaten it a couple of times and have certainly never made it, so here goes!  I shall let you know the outcome next week.

During my married life I have had a couple of Christmas food disasters.  Once, after returning from the pub on Christmas Eve, I decided to solve our beer hunger with a chip butty.  We ate the rather sad sandwich only to find the next morning that what I had thought were oven chips were, in fact, normal frozen chips which I had merely defrosted and wedged between two slices of bread!  On another occasion we had set the turkey timer way too early and returned home on Christmas morning in rather a hungover state to the smell of a fully cooked and cooled turkey - yuk!

Before having a family I would normally offer to work right up until Christmas Eve.  It was often good fun working in an office with time for a fuddle* with colleagues.  On one occasion the Finance Director asked me the usual question "what do you eat on Christmas Day?" I replied in the usual way but added that for the rest of the family I always cooked a gibbon! Hoho! Everyone thought this was hilarious.  I had meant to say a capon, otherwise known as a large chicken.  The meat eaters would have been very happy ... no fighting over who gets the leg!

* fuddle - a communal buffet for a special occasion; often hosted within the workplace.

Sunday 14 December 2014

Waxing Lyrical!

Christmas comes at the darkest time of the year, heading towards the shortest day on December 21st. We use fairy lights and candlelight to brighten those dark days and nights.  In Victorian times Merchants would give candles to their best customers at Christmas to thank them for their business throughout the year.

Wax is used to make candles but can we eat it?  Do we even know we are eating it? Is it vegetarian?

Edible wax (ester) is used to coat some fruits so they appear shiny and attractive.

Paraffin wax, derived from petroleum, is often used in chocolates to make them appear glossy and prevents the chocolate from melting at room temperature.

Shellac is used to coat sweets to give them a hard shiny appearance and is a by-product of the Lac insect.

Several years ago on Christmas Day I produced a Yuletide Log complete with a row of The Snowman candles.  They were such cute figures that I decided not to light them for fear they would melt quickly. One family member thought they were made of icing and promptly ate one!  Ah well, it didn't kill him so, although I wouldn't advise eating candles, it seems that waxes used in confectionery are in fact safe and what's more, probably vegetarian!

Sunday 7 December 2014

Work Colleagues!

When I first became vegetarian, only one of my friends didn't eat meat (but did eat fish). My boss at the time, however, had an eleven year old daughter who had decided she didn't want to eat meat at a very young age and he and his wife had allowed her to go with it.  This was a brave decision given that it was the late eighties and vegetarianism was fairly uncommon as well as the fact that children need all the nutrients they can get and so the parents had to ensure she had a good, well balanced diet without meat or fish.

For my first Christmas as a vegetarian, said boss bought me a copy of their family bible - "No meat for me please!" by Jan Arkless.  It was a small picture-less paperback which proved to be invaluable as it provided recipes for the vegetarian in the family. Some 24 years later I still refer to my battered copy although many recipes are committed to memory from constant use.

Whilst working at the same company, I shared an open plan office with seven others; five girls and two men.  The girls provided teas and coffees each and every day whilst the two men never thought to put the kettle on!  We moaned about them all year but at Christmas would be rewarded with a miniature of brandy and a bottle of Babysham - happy days! They would also buy us a box of chocolates in the form of those lovely shell shapes - Belgian Duc d'O.  We all loved them although nobody could pronounce their name until someone in the office named them "duck doo".  Even the thought of bird droppings could not put me off them!

Thursday 27 November 2014

Party Season

It's December and that means Party Season.  On a dull December day it's a chance to put your glad rags on and have some fun with friends and family.  It may be the office party, a night out with loved ones, cocktails with the girls or high tea with your nan.  Either way it is usually an opportunity to binge out on a sea of food and drink.

Party food can mean champagne and canapés or a cuppa and a buffet.  The former can be a nightmare for the vegetarian as the waiters gliding around the room quite often aren't aware of the contents of the food they are presenting. Chorizo on bruschetta can easily be mistaken for an innocent cherry tomato topping, particularly at a party lit only by candlelight and fairy lights!  Equally, even if there are staff standing behind the mountains of food laid out on the trestle table, they often don't know the difference between tsatziki and taramasalata!

Peter Kay does a well known sketch about buffet food and he's not wrong -vol-au-vents, chicken legs, cheesecake repeated across the table with a few garlic breads thrown in for good measure!

At one party I was eating bread and cheese (yeah really) when I noticed something on the eyebrow of a friend.  I said "oh dear you've got a crumb on your forehead" as I reached up to flick it off.  "It's not a crumb ... it's a wart!" he replied.  Sadly the ground did not open up and swallow me; but I did have to eat some humble pie with my bread and cheese!

Sunday 23 November 2014

Fruit and Nuts!

Today is Stir-up-Sunday!  It is the last Sunday before Advent and traditionally the day to make Christmas pudding.  This is to allow the flavours of fruit, nuts, spices and alcohol to have plenty of time to mature before the big day.  Originally the pudding was made from 13 ingredients, representing Jesus and his twelve Disciples, and everyone in the family would have a stir and make a wish, moving the spoon from East to West to represent the journey the Three Kings made.  A silver sixpence was sometimes added for good luck.  My Grandad would spend an age practically sieving the pudding, whether to get rich or to avoid choking, we were never sure!  Vegetarians, however, should watch out that no suet is added to their pudding!

Whilst I consider myself "awkward" for being vegetarian, many people are equally awkward in their dislike of any dried fruit.  Sadly they do not get to enjoy the seasonal pleasures of Christmas cake, pudding and mince pies.  One friend regularly asks the waiter if the sticky toffee pudding contains dates as she cannot bear to eat any dried fruit.

Nuts are another seasonal treat and particularly good for us (unless of course you have an allergy). They provide much needed protein for we vegetarians but are also good at bringing cholesterol levels down too.  Whilst in New York I discovered some delicious honey-roasted nuts sold in carts on the streets under the brand Nuts4Nuts - delicious! 


In Yorkshire I saw this sign outside a pet shop - just made me smile!

Saturday 15 November 2014

Giving it up!

Eating a barbecued pork chop on a campsite in Hawes in 1990 was the last time I agreed to eat meat. Whilst chewing the grainy texture the realisation that I did not like it, nor any other meat, was an epiphany! I, like most people had accepted meat as the substantial part of any meal but what were the options? I decided to live a meat free diet for a month and see how I got on.  The options, in the beginning, were a lot of jacket potatoes and copious amounts of ratatouille which I made on a cauldron like scale and froze in portions.  My husband called it "mush" as he continued to eat the meat I cooked for him.

Eating a piece of chorizo at a party in 2013 was the last time I ate meat, without agreeing to.  This has happened several times over the last 24 years.  There was the time in a well known department store restaurant when I ordered their vegetarian quiche only to realise, after several mouthfuls, that the red onions were in fact small cubes of ham.  At a local craft fare I ordered minestrone soup and found it loaded with ham hock.  Then, at a summer barbecue a drunken friend decided it would be good fun if I tried a sausage.  It got as far as my lips before I was able to stop him!  My best friend, herself a pescatarian, was caught ladling fish stock into the mushroom risotto she was cooking for me.  I could go on!  

There is the well known joke that it's okay for a vegetarian to have a ham sandwich as long as it's wafer thin ham!  Comedy comes from real life and it has been suggested that I "pick off the ham" from a Hawaiian pizza and that the pieces of meat in a casserole offered to me "are only tiny!" 

However, once the decision was made, I never wanted to go back ..... No, not even for a bacon sandwich!

Sunday 9 November 2014

The Vegetarian Tart!!

DEFINITIONS

Vegetarian: 

noun - a person who does not eat meat or fish, and sometimes other animal products, especially for moral, religious, or health reasons.

Tart: 

noun - an open pastry case containing a sweet or savoury filling.

noun - a woman who dresses or behaves in a way that is considered tasteless and sexually provocative - a woman of loose morals.

adjective - sharp or acid in taste - cutting, bitter or sarcastic


If you have logged on to my blog looking for Vegetarian news, views and amusing anecdotes, you have come to the right place.  If you typed in the word Tart and were looking for something along the lines of the second noun, you may be sadly disappointed!

Many people say to me "but do you eat fish?"  "No, I am a vegetarian" say I to the puzzled faces. If I were to eat fish I would be a Pescatarian: noun - a person who does not eat meat but does eat fish. Bizarrely, many of my friends are so-called vegetarians who eat fish.  It seems that calling oneself a pescatarian is just not the done thing!

On my numerous visits to various restaurants I have often been faced with the choice of ... a tart (usually goats cheese).  When the waiter (and I'll get on to them later) returns to the table bearing said meal, he bellows "who is The Vegetarian Tart?" My friends delight in pointing at me and squealing "she's here!!"