The Compromising Vegetarian

May 23, 2011 by Aly Hodge

To kick off  National Vegetarian Week Tasha Goddard of WAHM-BAM! is guest posting today.

I was born a vegetarian. I’m a third-generation vegetarian. I always assumed my children would be fourth-generation vegetarians. However, somehow I’ve ended up with children who will happily devour a ham sandwich, a steaming bowl of vegetable stew or smoked salmon and cream cheese bagels.

What happened?

I don’t know any different. I continue to be a vegetarian for moral reasons (I don’t want to kill another animal for food – or for much, really, but I’m not going to go into the ethical minefield of medical research and leather and… ), but I would almost certainly continue do so even if I didn’t have any ethical issues with eating meat. Because, on the few times I’ve eaten meat or fish (a few times voluntarily as a child and then other times by accident when older) I’ve either been sick or felt like I was going to be.

I tried going vegan a couple of times. I lasted four months the first time and about a month the second time. I missed the cheese more than most things. And cream. Whipped cream. It occurred to me, therefore, that if I’d not been brought up vegetarian there’s a strong chance I wouldn’t have had the staying power to actually remain vegetarian. I’d probably be drooling over bacon butties instead of feeling very queasy whenever (thankfully fairly rarely) the smell of one wafts up the stairs.

So, it seemed a good idea to provide the girls with the opportunity to make their own decision and, from my experience at least, it’s hard to decide to stop being vegetarian years down the road, if your body has never digested meat or fish. The feeling sick isn’t just a psychological reaction, meat and fish contain different kinds of proteins to dairy products and vegetable proteins. They’re digested in a different way. And years of never eating them means your body stops producing some of the acids required to digest these different proteins. (OK. I made all of that up, but it sounds right, doesn’t it? If I googled it, I’d probably find some research to support this theory.)

To be fair, if I’d ended up married to a vegetarian I can pretty much guarantee you that I wouldn’t have thought about this way and that I would be bringing up some of the fourth generation of vegetarians in the family. But I didn’t. I married Chris, who didn’t want to give up meat for me. At first this came as quite a shock. My dad gave up eating meat (in the house, at least – he was partial to a bacon butty in the pub now and again) for my mum, as did two uncles, so I had been kind of working under the assumption that this what people did when they married into the family. They gave up meat. Instead it was me doing the compromising, though, after so many years, Chris has developed an appreciation of vegetarian cooking (and some top-notch cordon vert culinary skills too.

How does it work?

We usually have a couple of meals a week that are completely vegetarian, two or three that are adapted (e.g. a base with different components for each, or a basically vegetarian meal with sausages or steak or something on the side) and then usually a couple of meals where we each cook something separate and the girls will have a bit of each (or sometimes just mine, especially if Chris’ meal is especially spicy).

Completely vegetarian

• creamy, leeky tagliatelle
• omelette, potatoes and salad
• cauliflower cheese with mashed potato
• vegetable stew
• vegetable lasagne
• shepherdess pie
• sweetcorn fritters, potatoes and vegetables
• vegetable minestrone (usually Chris will have something else)
• vegetable risotto (Chris doesn’t like risotto, so he’ll make something else)

Adaptations

• pasta – same pasta and base tomato sauce – I add vegetables to mine and Chris adds mince or chicken to his
• savoury pancakes – I make the pancakes and we have two different fillings
• Quorn fillets/Burgers (or something else from the freezer) with potatoes and veg (or salad)
• eggs, beans, chips and sausages (or sausages, beans and mash) – just two different kinds of sausages (the girls’ favourites are veggie hot dog style sausages, and I’m also quite partial to Linda McCartney sausages)
• grazing food – salads, roasted Mediterranean vegetables, baguette, cheeses and dips and cold meats (obviously the latter for the non-veggies)
• nachos – I make a veggie chilli (with no chilli powder) and Chris makes a mince one (with lots of chilli), we then share the tortilla chips and cheese (also works for other Mexican dishes)
• tortillas or quesadillas – Chris will have some chicken strips fried up in spices and I’ll make a tomatoey roasted vegetable mix – then we’ll add salsa, guacamole, etc. etc. as desired
• homemade pizza – share the pizza bases (very basic flour, olive oil and water fried briefly on either side) and the tomato sauce, then top with whatever we want
• Moroccan style dinner – vegetable couscous shared, then chickpea and tomato sauce for me and spiced lamb casserole (or similar) for Chris
• tortilla (Spanish omelette kind) with bean salad (tomato and lemon sauce) and green salad and with pork, chorizo and cabbage stew

There are loads of ways to adapt, though. You can just have a basic vegetarian meal and have some sausages or steak on the side, or some cold meat or even a quick starter of prawns and butter and tomatoes.

For the most part the girls eat the vegetarian meal and sometimes have both and very occasionally they’ll eat the meat meal, but not the vegetarian one. I think they’re getting introduced to a wider variety of foods than they would in an exclusively vegetarian household or a ‘traditional’ meat-eating one, which can only be good.

But, yes, if you’re wondering I do kind of keep score and cheer internally whenever the girls choose the veggie option over the meaty one. Can’t help it, really.