No meat for a month!



As anyone who's been following this blog may have figured out by now, I like vegetables. Fruit, too. In fact, diet-wise, I'd quite happily swap places with any animal that feeds mainly on pineapple, should such a creature exist.  I wouldn't complain too much if I had to munch on meals consisting entirely of members of the cabbage family either, provided they had been treated with sufficient care, as opposed to having been boiled to the edge of disintegration and beyond.

Even so, giving up meat for four whole weeks sounds quite scary. We're not just talking about red meat - in fact, that would mean practically zero changes to the usual cooking habits. For the next month, poultry and fish will also be barred from the kitchen. It's a project we've been talking about for months now, inspired in part by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's excellent book and TV series centred on a similar challenge. Plain logic also contributed to the idea: since we already follow a vegetable-based diet between Monday and Thursday, how hard can it be to give up on meat altogether for a limited amount of time? Not very hard at all, we figured, but now as the date is fast approaching - the challenge starts on Monday May 14 - I feel a slight twinge of nerves. Will we end up subsisting on various unappetising Quorn products? How long until bacon is ruled to be a vegetarian food item? Will the flavour of vegetables dull into a mush if there is nothing else on the menu, leading to a return to our grisly past feeding habits? On a more positive angle, how much of a difference will not chewing on meat make to how we feel and the cost of the weekly shop?

Stocking up on beef before the meat drought!

We'll soon find out. Find out how the challenge progresses (or not) right here. As for now, I'm off to prepare for a veggie month by loading up on meat-rich dishes...beef for lunch, chicken for dinner. Sounds about right.