2:24am is a good time to start writing isn't it? Hah...
I have been mildly shocked and surprised this month, but not really by the food, mostly by the reactions of meat eaters. People have told me I won't get any iron without meat (though bran flakes are full of this, along with numerous other vitamins, such as vitamin D, B6, B12...), that I'd have to take numerous supplements (see previous brackets, as well as considering how much fruit and veg intake has gone up), that without meat there's nothing to eat (if this is true, then why am I not losing weight?!), that my diet must be bland... the list goes on. And, after a while, I learnt to ignore most of it because the past month has actually opened my eyes to so many different foods that I wouldn't of tried had I continued to eat meat. Some of my favourite vegetarian/pescetarian meals include spinach, sweet poato and lentil dahl, vegetable stir fry (which can be made with numerous sauces), mexican vegetable soup, Morroccan chickpea soup, goats cheese risotto, baked sweet potato (with so many different fillings), pasta bake, roasted vegetable tart, fish tacos, sushi, as well as so many different types of salad.
Someone asked me at one point "do you just eat fish and vegetables?" I mean, how does a pescetarian answer that? Fish and vegetables may be the main part of my diet but it's not like I just boil some veg, stick a slice of fish in the oven and eat it like that. Take the fish tacos, for instance. I bought smoked mackerel marinated in ginger, lemon and chilli, fried it up, and bulked out the taco with lettuce, tomatoes, jalepenos, salsa... And something like Morroccan chickpea soup is full of vegetables and beans, as well as different spices which give it the most amazing flavour. I have eaten well, cheaply, and have discovered so many diverse foods this month, that I wouldn't of even considered had I stuck with meat.
Someone also once said to me that all vegetarians eat is pasta. This month I have eaten less pasta than ever before. I usually go through a really big packet of pasta in a month, but this month I've only half finished a small packet. One thing that's really frustrated me is the pizza issue. Every time I say it's hard to get good, vegetarian pizzas someone comes out with "just get a margharita." I mean... what?! Margharitas are the most bland things I've ever tasted, if I want a vegetarian pizza I want it covered in as many different types of vegetable as you can fit on there, along with a few different types of cheese. This frustrated me massively when I didn't feel like cooking today and went to Tesco, to discover about 5 shelves full of margharitas and only one mushroom pizza in amongst the countless different types of meat pizza. I don't even like mushrooms on pizza. I had the same sort of issue in Filling Station last week, only finding about 6 or 7 vegetarian options (no fish, of course...) on the menu.
So I have a few days left of being pescetarian and, in all honesty, I'm not sure I'm going to go back to being an omnivore. I like how much cheaper my groceries are and I'm so much healthier, because eating less meat and more veggies and fruit has encouraged me, over all, to eat better and to cut out the junk. One of my main reasons for giving up meat was because of the fact that we take advantage of our meat supplies in the west, and I've been thinking more about this over the past few weeks. Today I cracked open an egg to discover the yolk was a very pale colour; this is a sign of a stressed out chicken that hasn't had enough living space. Those eggs were labelled as free range. So how much are farmers getting away with these days? Are these supposedly free range chickens really free range, or do they just have a little bit more space than the average battery hen? As a media student I'm very aware of how much the media (and the government) hide from us, so it makes me a little nervous to think that the people who sell me my food could be lying to me as well.
Anyway, I shall head off to bed now.
x
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