After watching ‘What the health’ (a
documentary I caught on Netflix), I was interested to know about getting more
of my dietary protein from plant-based foods and not meat.
None of us have diabetes and the only case
in my family was my maternal grandmother who got type-2 when she was in her
70s, but, the documentary made me think about the processed meats we’ve been
eating – if those antibiotics are safe for animals yet not known how, or even
if, they are safe for human consumption, is it a risk worth taking to eat them regularly? what classifies as regularly?
So, I reintroduced the ‘Meat Free Monday’,
I’m getting rid of all the processed meats and not planning on buying anymore
and I went vegetarian for a week – I tried to make my meals vegan for the 7
days but am sure 1 day I didn’t manage it - hence the '"well almost!".
Breakfasts – weren’t very different, toast
with peanut butter or jam and my son sometimes had cereal and I made pancakes one day at the
weekend and we had them with maple syrup.
Lunches – I eat the leftovers from the
night before. As my son is off school with the holidays, his lunches consisted
of pizza at a play date one day, we had a couple of hot dogs so he had those on
another day, we both had a garden salad with crusty soda bread, and I made some
kidney bean and cumin burgers on another and whilst the son isn’t madly keen on
them he did eat it – with tomato, relish and lettuce in the burger bun who
cares that it is a bean burger!, cheese quesadilla and salad is also a
favourite of my son.
Snacks – freshly cooked popcorn and I make
mini cheese biscuits (and now need to look out for some vegan cheese to try to
make them with), little dishes of olives, cheeses and breadsticks with balsamic
vinegar (my son LOVES this!), oh, and my husband and his love of ‘dirty
cheese’-no words for that one and he’s too old to try and change him.
Dinners were a bit more troublesome for my
husband who struggled with a couple of the meals:
Day 1 – for Meat Free Monday I made a
seitan biryani, tarka dahl and some curry vegetable and tofu fritters and
served them with a mint & sour cream dip (I didn’t have any yogurt).
Neither my husband or my son liked the biryani (it wasn’t THAT bad!), and interestingly,
my son was eating it up until my husband said he didn’t like the flavour. Husband
did like the fritters though and asked me to make them the next time I make an
Indian-inspired meal, so not all bad. I had made a garlic/ginger/tofu marinade for
the seitan but he said it was the taste of the biryani he didn’t like as opposed
to the texture. It was a very different recipe to a tried-and-test biryani I’ve
made for years with mince lamb so I wonder if I should have stuck with that
recipe and tried to find a way to incorporate the seitan-something to work on.
Day 2 – because they were so grumpy after yesterday,
I made a meal I knew they would be happy with, Salmon in a creamy tomato sauce
and sweetcorn rice. I added some prawns and they were fine about it, husband
went back for seconds (and thirds, he revealed today!) . I had some of the leftover biryani and added some chilli
flakes to the tarka dahl because, no matter how hard I try or how I fiddle with it I cannot get a nice, soupy, breakfast tarka dahl and that makes me more sad than you would think.
Day 3 – there was some leftover Japanese
beef stew in the freezer and so I made it into a filo-pastry topped pie for the
husband and our son and I had more biryani and dahl and a roti, even I was
tiring of the biryani by now!
Day 4 – I know my son eats this but the
husband prefers it as a side dish with a steak, well, he’d prefer to not have
it at all but if he has to, then… Iranian vegetable stew and home-made soda
bread and you don’t need anything else. So, the husband had it as a side dish
with a pork chop that was in the freezer and wore a face like a wet weekend but
said it was “ok”. It is OK! And I’ve made it a number of times – it’s warming,
vegetable yumminess that soaks into lumps of bread and is lovely but, the
husband hates stews and even though this isn’t a meaty oil slick with doughy
dumplings bobbing about in it, that reminds him of wet afternoons growing up, the
mere word stew makes him miserable.
Day 5 – I made chicken satay and seitan satay and served it with some cucumber, I made fried rice and made theirs egg
fried rice. I also served a few types of Chinese dumplings. Fine. As it happens
they love that egg fried rice so all is harmony in again.
Saturday – we try to get out as a family once
a month and so we popped over to our local food court, had a couple of beers,
my son had a run around with some friends and got to eat chips and I got a
couple of pizzas from one of the food court stands – I didn’t eat the pepperoni
one but got a vegetable feast. I doubt that was vegan. Here is a revelation, husband said it was better than
the pepperoni one because it maintained moistness and, because it had olives on
it, son ate it too. So, there is an idea…
Day 7 – OK, back to the seitan, the thing
about it is you make a batch of it and it can sit in the ‘fridge for over a
week and just use it whenever, it’s great but I don’t think it would be
possible to feed it to the husband and the son more than once a week on a
regular basis. OK, maybe the son but definitely not the husband. So, I
marinated it in BBQ sauce and cooked some ribs that we had in the
freezer and served it with corn on the cobs, homemade coleslaw and cornbread.
Was fine.
Desserts – well, there are always ice
creams in our freezer, but I made a vegan peach cobbler on the Sunday, and I
made little s’mores tarts another day (not my thing, because I don’t eat
chocolate) oh, and fruit, mostly watermelon. I also scored a lot, ALOT!, of mum points because I bought a box of 10 mini chocolate eclairs from a local bakery (that only cost $5) - I win! :-D
Was it a success? - yes, for me it was. OK, so I got bored of the biryani by day 3, but
that’s my fault for making so much of it in the thought that the husband and
son would eat it! I also reverted to a bunch of meat free recipes that I’ve
cooked many times, but, I wouldn’t be able to use them every week and have to
find some (a lot!) of new ones, if only to keep-up meat free Monday. Oh, and the seitan, husband says he just doesn't like it, regardless of how it is cooked. that's a real shame and i can persevere and live in hope
Will I keep it up? - we're going on a trip to Hong Kong next week and I don't know if I can keep it vegan all week, yes, I should be able to but I don't know. So, I'm aiming for a vegetarian August and keep it vegan where I can
