When I met the beloved he was vegetarian. He was living in a vegan commune at the time and we joke that I tempted him into marrying me through a killer combination of hot water, fluffy towels and bacon butties. I strongly suspect that as The Untouchables teaches us – we laugh because it is funny, we laugh because it is true.
His vegetarian wasn’t solely ideological like my teenage vegetarian/vegan period. He has a family history of serious life-changing illness that can be controlled by diet and less or no meat is the key. We’ve had nearly four years of ignoring this and enjoying eating whatever we liked but things have to change.
The vegetarian recipe books that my Mum bought us for an engagement present have been dusted off and the experiment begins. And it is an experiment as we have to include my Mum and the monkeys in this. I grew up in a house where my Mum made three meals a night. One meat-free meal for me which was cooked while I hollered at her not to contaminate it by using the wrong spoon. Then a traditional meal for her and my grandmother but one of these had to be put through a blender as my Nan refused to wear her false teeth and couldn’t chew. Honestly, I don’t know she didn’t strangle the pair of us.
I am completely out of my comfort zone. I was vegetarian and vegan for six years in the 90’s. It was a life of goats cheese with a side of goats cheese. I know that things have changed because there are vegan choices in restaurants now but I have no desire to get on the goats cheese tart carousel again.
So far Mum has tried falafel and liked it. Feta cheese is a big hit. Slow roasted tomatoes with chilli over pasta would have been a winner but I’m a bit heavy handed with the chilli. Coming up I’m going to try my hand at a mushroom curry and get to grips with bulgar wheat. We are not being full-time veggies. We are aiming for four meat-free days a week. I have no clue what I am doing but I have some culinary skills and I really love my husband. He’s very nice and that’s why I married him. Part of the plan was to live a long life together and I’d like him to do that in the best of health. So this is an adventure. As long as no one makes me eat a courgette we’ll be grand.