Food Diary: Wednesday

At last, time to do some proper cooking. The kitchen in the house where I lodge is currently being renovated which is far from ideal but it's nice to not feel like I'm rushing around at least. I'm making vegetable lasagne for tea and here is a the rest of my food diary for the day:

Cold Porridge with Sultanas, Cinnamon and Ginger

3 x Tea (at Stirley Farm) throughout the day – Fairtrade Teabag, local delivered milk

Home-made spicy roasted butternut squash and sweet potato soup with 2 wholemeal pitta bread

2 x malt loaf slice with olive spread

So this is what went into my lasagne, which is currently in the oven:

Vegetable Lasagne: Onion – Sainsburys Standard, loose; Garlic – I forget, maybe Lidl; Dried Mixed Herbs -Lidl; Pesto – Branded, bought from corner shop quite a while ago; Mushrooms – Sainsburys Standard, loose; Aubergines – Sainsburys Basics brand (Grown in Holland); Yellow Courgettes – Grown at Stirley Farm; Broccoli – Grown at Stirley Farm; Tomatoes – Grown at Stirley Farm; Carton Chopped tomatoes – Sainsburys Basics brand; Tomato Paste – Lidl; Fresh Parsley – Grown at Stirley Farm; Red Lentils – Dried; Green Lentils – Dried; Pasta Sheets – Sainsburys Organic Brand; Olive Spread – Cooperative brand (I didn't have any butter but it seems to work); Plain Flour – Sainsburys Standard brand; Milk – mix of organic and non organic (didn't have enough so I had to pinch a little from my landlady); Parmesan Cheese – Sainsburys brand

There are quite a lot of issues in there: home grown food; high carbon footprint food grown under artificial conditions (those are probably some very naughty aubergines); Organics; food packaging... But (as I'm making this up as I go along) I think I will talk a little bit today about why I'm not a vegetarian.

I get asked a lot if I'm a vegetarian. I got asked twice this evening as I was making my lasagne: by my landlady, who has asked me this several time, and then by the builder who is taking the kitchen apart (although he worded it “are you one of those non-meat eating people?”). I can see why people ask when I'm making a lasagne with lentils rather than mince or at the farm when most of my lunches seem to be meat free. Quite often people just assume that I am without any such clues. I guess I just have a vegetarian aura.

But I'm not a vegetarian. I love meat! Loving meat however doesn't mean that I feel it's necessary to have it in every meal. Most of the meals I cook are meat-free for a variety of reasons. One being that meat is expensive! As there are lots of other ingredients I enjoy just as much, I feel like it's an unnecessary cost when times are tight financially. I'd love to see the myths that vegetarian food isn't filling or nutritious enough to feed a family well and truly busted! Families that are struggling to pay for the weekly shop could save a great deal by preparing several veggie dishes a week (there is a project in their somewhere... Some simple cooking skills to help stop reliance on pre-made food which is much more expensive than home-made as well as being much less healthy wouldn't go amiss either – but I'm going off on a bit of a tangent there). As well as the financial cost, I am aware of the environmental costs of eating large amounts of meat. I think the campaign Meat-Free Mondays is a great idea or at least it's a great start. Meat (and dairy for that matter) production is highly energy inefficient. Using valuable resources to produce vast quantities of meat makes little sense in a time when we need to be thinking seriously about reducing emissions and producing more food for a growing global population. It seems to me, the way that we consume meat these days reflects our disconnection with where our food comes from. When you pick up a pack of meat in the supermarket it's hard to relate it back to the living, breathing animal and the amount of food and water (and possible other inputs) it took to get that animal ready for your plate. 

It's in the light of these facts that people might wonder, if you care so much then why not go totally vegetarian? Or vegan for that matter? This may seem overly dramatic but I think my life would be much less enjoyable and culturally rich if I ate no meat at all. Furthermore, I wouldn't want to live in a world where without meat or dairy production. Farming is an important part of our heritage and forms the landscape that we live in. We'd all miss the rolling hills of pasture where cattle and sheep graze if they were turned over to produce potatoes or lentils. High input factory farming is muscling out traditional, low input and sustainable farming. And that's another version of the countryside that none of us would like to see. There is a balance somewhere in the middle, where we reduce the amount of meat and dairy we consume so that our needs can be met by less energy intense farming methods and where these farmers get a fair price that reflects their inputs so they can compete in the food market. 

My lasagne was delicious, by the way.