Several bloggers have mentioned the fact that they’re joining in with the Meat Free Mondays concept recently, and we’re going one better in this household (thanks to Ashley’s new health & fitness regime), and having meat free Mondays, Tuesdays AND Wednesdays.
Ashley’s always favoured a pretty appalling diet, it has to be said, very high in dairy, meat and alcohol, and very lacking in fruit, veg and fibre. He occasionally interspersed this with ridiculous ‘diets’ involving not eating all day, then having a bloody great big dinner and half a bottle of wine, which I think I’ve mentioned before.
Anyway, when he was offered the London Marathon place this year, he was in the middle of one of the silly diet phases, and I INSISTED very vociferously (surely not, I hear you all cry!), that he started eating three proper meals if he was going to run a marathon. He has taken this on board, thank goodness, and is now eating breakfast, lunch and dinner.
He has expressed a preference for vegetarian food during the week, and after being a bit scathing about it, I’ve sat down and thought about it, and decided it’s actually quite a good idea. It’s not so much I thought it was a bad idea to start with, just that I don’t cook an awful lot of veggie food, and my veggie repertoire is therefore quite limited. And because I’ve been (and still am) so busy with work, the thought of having to come up with lots of new and interesting recipes during the week filled me with misery. There’s only so much vegetarian chilli, and pasta with pesto that one can eat!
Anyway, on reflection, as I said, I think it’s actually a very positive idea. We’ve been having veggie weekdays for three weeks now, and as long as I plan in advance and make sure I’ve got everything I need (like any menu planning, I suppose), I’m finding it quite easy. And we’ve eaten some really tasty things, too.
If anybody has any nice veggie recipes they’d like to share, please do tell (and if they’re fairly quick and fairly easy, so much the better!).
I find vegie stuff really hard to do out here – Finland is one of those countries where they look at you strangely and offer you the side vegetables or a salad if you say you don’t eat meat. thankfully i do eat meat, but somedays you just fancy a non meat day, don’t you?
well done you! Would be interested to hear of your recipes too. My favourite meat free (which goes down well with hub who is not a meat free fan!) is a pasta dish which is a layer of cooked pasta in a lasagne dish. on top of that I put an onion and tomato and oregano mix and on top of that cheese sauce – its a bit like lasagne (without the meat) and I use Gordon Ramsey’s recipe from Channel 4 show he did (without the meat of course!!)
other than that Quorn Burgers go down well as long as there is some onion relish.
Oooh, welcome on board! Our MFM was super simple yesterday because after entertaining houseguests for 5 days and cooking up a storm every day we couldn’t be bothered with anything exciting. For lunch I just had a homemade salad and a wedge of bread and for dinner we made baked potatoes (I had it with cheese, The Boy had baked beans) with more salad.
I agree with Mo, a veggie lasagne is one of my favourite dishes but in the “bolognaise” we put lentils and grated carrot to bulk it out a bit and it’s DELICIOUS.
Another fave is stuffed portabello mushrooms or stuffed large peppers and you stuff them with rice and a mixture of things. There are loads of recipes online for these. And if you have it with a side salad and/or a veggie soup then it’s a filling meal.
Are you still planning on eating fish on meat-free days or do you mean veggie in the proper sense of the word?
I’m very impressed Caroline – next you will be telling me Ashley has given up the drink!!! If you like baked beans and veggie sausages this is a hearty meal:
Cook 1 packet of quorn sausages (or Linda McCartney but they are not as low in fat)
Diagonally slice and put in the bottom of a lasagne dish
Mix in half a tin of chopped tomatoes
A tin of spicey cooked beans
Half a tin of baked beans
Add a teaspoon of chopped herbs
Cover with mash potato
Cover with grated cheese and bake for about 20 mins
Serve with crusty bread and salad or green veg
Failing that the quorn burgers in a bun are good with fat free potato wedges (if you put the burgers in brown bun with loads of salad it looks really healthy)!!
Good luck!!!!
Ooh, good for you. We’re a family of vegetarians so I’ve gathered a massive collection of recipes over the years. I’d suggest investing in a good recipe book if the dietary changes are going to be long term and would recommend any of Rose Elliot’s. She’s the business.
Thank you everybody for lots of brilliant ideas – plenty of ‘food’ for thought there – (pls excuse the pun!) – will be trying out some of these very soon x
You can’t beat Rose Eliot for fabulous vegetarian recipes. I cook quite a lot of her’s regularly and can highly recommend them.
Quorn chicken-style pieces are good in a curry sauce with lots of veggies – courgette, pepper, mushroom etc, and are also lovely used as a filling for fajitas – with the same sorts of chopped veggies.
We aren’t vegetarians but we eat a lot of vegetarian alternative foods like Quorn and I cook without meat.
No time to type now but I’ll see what i can think of later.
Lisa x
I just posted a veggie recipe. I’m trying to be meat free 6 days a week, I can hardly believe I used to be a veggie and even a vegan, it’s amazing how used to meat you get!