So, what do you eat?
Eating vegetarian is a real culinary adventure. Once you’ve broken
out of the conventional meat-and-two-veg, you can break all the rules,
or stick with more familiar tastes if you prefer.
Many of your favourite dishes, such as spaghetti bolognaise, chilli,
stir-fry and curries can be made with soya mince, pulses or just vegetables.
Bean burgers, pizzas, veggie sausages, ratatouille, baked beans, scrambled
eggs, jacket potatoes, many cheeses and all sorts of ready meals, pasta
sauces and soups are all suitable for vegetarians already. A few recipe
ideas are shown on the following pages, but before you start cooking,
fill your cupboards with the right basic ingredients and you’ll
find the transition much easier, and tastier.
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The Vegetarian Store Cupboard
Most people keep a few stock items in their kitchen cupboard or freezer.
Many of the basics – bread, flour, vegetable oil, dairy products,
free-range eggs, frozen chips etc – will be suitable for vegetarians,
but you may find it helpful to use the following as a guide for your
first big shop as a new veggie.
•Lots of fresh fruit and vegetables
•Vegetable oil
•Olive oil
•Vegetable stock cubes
•Vegetarian gravy granules (check the label, many meat-flavoured varieties
are actually vegetarian)
•Yeast extract (eg marmite)
•White wine vinegar (or balsamic for a treat)
•Peanut butter
•Tinned beans and pulses
•Tinned tomatoes
•Tinned soup
•Dried pasta
•Rice
•Quick-cook noodles
•Cous-cous
•Dried soya chunks
•Tinned soups
•Ready made pasta / curry sauces
•Dried herbs and spices
•Seeds (try sesame, pumpkin, sunflower and many others)
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TO KEEP IN THE FRIDGE
•Free range eggs
•Milk
•Vegetarian cheese
•Butter or margarine
•Natural yoghurt
•Houmous
•Vegetarian pesto
•Tofu (look out for marinated or smoked varieties)
•Tomato puree
•Mustard
•Quorn products (look for the Vegetarian Society approved products)
•Jars of sun-dried tomatoes or other antipasto (mushrooms, olives, artichokes
or peppers in seasoned oil)
•Fresh soups, pies and ready-meals
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TO KEEP IN THE FREEZER
•Soya and Quorn mince or chunks
•Vegetarian sausages and burgers
•Ready rolled pastry
•Pizza bases
•Tortilla wraps
•A variety of frozen vegetables
•Ready-made pies and meals (many supermarket freezers have a special vegetarian
section)
•Shelled nuts (try brazils, cashews, almonds and walnuts) – buy in
bulk to save on the price and store in the freezer to keep them tasting
fresh
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The list looks long, but you don’t need to buy everything!
In fact, your new vegetarian lifestyle shouldn’t increase your
weekly shopping bill because the price of veggie ready meals and frozen
foods
is usually around the same or slightly cheaper than their meaty counterparts.
Once you get into the swing of things you'll probably find that your
shopping bill actually goes down as the raw ingredients for many vegetarian
dishes are surprisingly cheap and many also have the advantage of being
much quicker to cook than meat.
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"What I like best about being a vegetarian
is the feeling that I'm contributing towards a more loving, fairer,
ecologically-sound world. That, and
the food..."
Rose Elliot
Cookery Writer and Vegetarian Society Patron
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next page - recipes and meal ideas
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