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Mark Bittman makes a lot of sense on the need not to give up meat but eat less. In the New York Times (via Lifehacker) he outlines a manifesto for eating less meat on which I’ve put my own spin below.
It’s also worth checking out Bittman on the excellent TED Talks.
Meanwhile, with Confessions of a Food Nazi we’re planning the vegan/vegetarian bloggers meet. I think we have six coming already.
Where: Lentil as Anything Abbotsford Convent. Afterwards at Handsome Steve’s House of Refreshment.
When: 12.30pm Saturday 26th July
1. Forget the protein thing.
Vegetables have protein too. Ditto nuts etc.
2. Buy less meat
Easy. Meat is becoming too expensive. $38 for an Organic chicken? $30 for a regular leg of lamb?
3. Get it out of the center of the plate.
Make vegetables the centre and meat a condiment, a treat.
4. Buy more vegetables, and learn new ways to cook them.
That’s the tricky bit. Try Antonio Carluccio’s Vegetables.
5. Make non-meat items as convenient as meat.
Vegetables are actually very easy to prepare. And grow.
6. Make some rules.
I’ll have salad instead of a burger one lunchtime this week.
7. Look at restaurant menus differently.
Tricky. Most are meat or fish based.
Any tricks or tips? Are you coming?
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{ 22 comments… read them below or add one }
I really dont think it is that hard to reduce meat consumption. I can go all week without eating meat (not fish) and hardly notice. I do like to make sure I eat it once or twice a week though.
Particularly in winter, making vegetable soups and stews is about the easiest thing you can do. salad sandwiches for lunch, fruit as snacks, nuts in everything.
If it was to go vegan I think that would get quite hard but less meat is easy. I know a lot of people (mostly guys) who think a meal HAS to involve a steak or something similar. It is these people I think who would have the most difficulty reducing their intake.
I agree with it also being easier to buy less meat as it is too expensive. Plus it is hard to get if you dont have a reliable butcher nearby (Coles meat makes me angry)
Im going to eat some vegetable sushi rolls now.
Count Dan and I in for Lentil As Anything.
My tip: I tend not to like all the nasties that go into mass production meat (not to mention the ecological impacts and cruelty of production), I try to buy only really good quality organic meat from the market/farmers markets/source etc. Yes it is expensive, but our meat consumption has reduced quite substantially. Not only is it beneficial for the health, but tastes a darn site better as well.
I was recently in King Island and purchased a couple of kickarse cryovacced eye fillets which I carried back home on the plane. I have portioned it out into steaks and chucked it in the freezer. That $60 investement will see us right for a couple of months!
Hi guys - am looking forward to meeting you at last Mellie. Have posted a few more details over at foodnazi. Already I am getting comments from Melbourne foodbloggers who are totally new to me. Amazed that it is a vegetarian event that is pulling a few quiet ones out of the woodwork.
Will we all have to wear a flower in our buttonhole so we recognise each other? A prop perhaps? Ideas Ed?
I agree on the cutting down of meat in general. As for the cost it need not be as expensive as you think. Prime cuts always cost more & are on the increase however the bits that need long slow cooking are usually much cheaper.
$38 for an organic chook, tell em their dreaming! Having said that, poor chicken, having been produced so cheaply for years will have to overcome the stigma of its perception as a cheap meat, especially if we as consumers are concerned with it being raised & slaughtered ethically.
I could (& did) quite happily do without meat for a few years. These days, concerned with the provenance of the meat I buy, I’m lucky to be able to dispatch one steer a year from our farm, for our own consumption, that way I know what we’re eating. This is meat that I think about everytime I take some from the deepfreeze, not just some indiscriminate red lump from the garishly lit refrigeration cabinet. I wish I could be there fo0r this vegetarian feast & I hope it goes well!
I’ll be there. Sounds grand.
Good tip re protein: you only need to eat a piece the size of a pack of playing cards and you’ve met your protein needs for the day. Any more and it is simply wasted - your system, um, washes it away.
Looking forward to it.
Ran, my problem is that I live with a Queenslander who likes her meat. And we eat out a lot too. I have friends like that who have to eat meat and mostly est steak when they eat out which seems a waste most of the time.
Mellie, Look forward to seeing you both again.
AOF, first time we met I think it was Macs. Iphones? Perhaps baby carrots in the lapel more realistically. I’ve noticed a few newcomers over at your blog. I think an updated list of bloggers is due soon.
Gobbler, it was a god big chook and lasted a whole week, made stock, the leftovers of whichmade dog food. I saw a measly thing in Coles the other day for $6. Six lousy dollars! People don’t realise that these chooks take twice as long to grow and therefore more feed, real estate and so on. Everytime I buy a chook Iwrestle betwen the chemical free Ionica for about $12 and all the way up the scale.
Lucy, look forward to it. They say the amount of meat in a Big Mac canfit into a matchbox! Last night I had a 200g steak left. I split it into two thin slices and beat them thinner and majored of veggies - Celeriac remoulade, baked baby beetroot dressed in walnut oil and sherry vinegar with goats cheese and walnuts, bitter salad leaves (I’ve gone blank on their name) with rocket and beetroot leaves.
Rick Stein in his series Mediterranean Escapes says that the best vegetarian dishes don’t try to be vegetarian, they just happen to contain no meat and he has a point, one needn’t try too hard to compensate for serving no meat.
My eat less meat tip is to find a butcher who cuts from the piece and get him to cut oyster blade steaks no more than 5mm thick, two or three per serve. Cook them on a smoking hot grill pan or heavy cast iron pan as quickly as possible - cheap and tasty. Gobbler is right, don’t forget the lesser cuts, they are great value.
Gruner Butcher sells Glenloth chickens at about $16 for a 1.5kg bird.
I would have loved to meet you all again, but I will be away on holidays.
I’m addicted to hearty vegies at the moment, du puy lentils, cavolo nero and beetroot, can’t get enough. I often find that a vegetarin meal for me is pasta, I’ll just take all the bits in my fridge and turn it into a vegetable pasta number.
Jack
Meat is crazily expensive these days, and I do try my best to buy the properly done, happy-animal stuff. Which means I eat a lot of lentils, lol. I have found that getting some really good vegetarian cookbooks (I own Simon Rimmer’s Accidental Vegetarian which is a good one, and the library has a good range) helps with expanding one’s reportoire and of course the cheaper cuts of meat come into their own in winter…
The list sounds fairly practical and applicable to everyday eating.
I’m working during the day, but will try to pop in to Handsome Steve’s! I have been eating a lot of meat lately, but my one tip for cutting back is SOUP! Yummy, filling, nourishing soup.
xox Sarah
I will be there, too. Sounds fab! Will confirm closer to the date.
As for meat and seafood, I cant live without them. I rather think that eating them in moderation is the key. So I organise my dinner like meat-fish-veg nites. Of course there are always plenty of vegs in my meal so I think it’s pretty healthy.
Neil, I think I had a 3kg bird that time but i must remember Gruners.
Laura, youshouldn’t forget pizzas and risotto - fantastic vegetarian food.
Sarah/Anh look forward to seeing youthere.
Hours since ate meaat: 18 ( I couldn’t resist a dodgy pork pie at the market).
Count me in for Lentil as Anything.
I have no problem cutting back on meat. Sometimes I got a month without even noticing, but that is because I was a vegetarian for six and a half years and am also a poor student. But really, I just don’t crave it. When I go out, I probably opt for fish, but that too is a rarity.
But, being a poor student doesn’t mean that I an unethical. My weekly trips to the markets sees me trawling the organics aisle, and when I do buy meat, I make sure I ask a few questions before I purchase it. Simple as that. Unfortunately, my housemates are still eating processed, packaged things that you get from supermarkets that have gone to the ends of the earth in their production.
In saying that, I am currently in Darwin and couldn’t resist the amazing Hawker food at the markets last night and had a Malaysian beef curry puff. Shoik.
Its all about choice isn’t it? making a stand and eating only ethical/organic/your bandwagon meat where possible and otherwise eat vegetables. We already get an organic veggie box delivery, buy meat from butchers or organic/free range etc, have meals where 75% is different veggies - as an added bonus, veggies have less calories than meat or carbs but we still succumb to the odd Thai delivery of chicken cashew nut or beef pho at local viet etc etc - I know that meat ain’t been grown right but I still eat it. My next step is to only order vegetarian when out unless I know the origin of the meat source. Its a hard step to make. I am willing to try.
This is one of the reasons why I’m grateful to have learned to cook as a uni student living away from home — the cost of meat forced me to shop and cook by these rules before I even knew they existed. I still love cooking and eating meat (I get very excited come Mother’s Day or Christmas when someone else is paying for the ingredients I’m cooking), but there are so many other tastes and textures out there to try. Legumes in particular are a godsend.
Another way for meat eaters to help reduce the impact of their choice is to make what’s available go further. By embracing the less popular guts and the offal, a smaller number of animals (i.e. less environmental impact) can feed (and satisfy) the same number of people.
Jess,look forward to seeing you. Change the house mates perhaps?
Tim/Sue, I just get this craving for more veggies and just spent four days in the ountry where I was surprised that I almost managed to eat vegetarian.
Agree with Neil,
The best veggie recipes just happen to not contain meat. Think dhaal, or stirfries.. yummy and nourishing without the whole trap that some people fall into of “make a bolognese sauce and omit the meat”. My son is dating a vegetarian, and I have learned to avoid that pitfall by trial and error. We have also been making the vegetables the star of the meal, rather than the animal protein. When shanks hit $3+, you gots to get creative, hey?
A couple of really good, practical and inspiring veggie cookbooks are India’s Vegetarian Cooking: A Regional Guide by Monisha Bharadwaj (actually all her books are great) and Madhur Jaffrey’s World Vegetarian which is HUGE and I probably cook from it at least once a week.
PG, love dahl, chickpea curry. Let’s not forget risotto. I’ve a great mushroom goulash recipe I must share.
Hannah, Madhur Jaffrey is one of my most used books mainly for her vegetable dishes.
I think becoming Vegetarian, or even just eating less meat is easier than many people think.
As others have somewhat said, it’s really just a change of mindset.
14 years ago my dad came home from work and said to my mum, for the next 49 days the family is to have no meats consumed (it is a Buddhist tradition to not eat meat for 49 days after a family member has passed away). My mum responded at the time by saying she had no idea how to cook many meals that don’t contain any meat.
Guess what? She remained a Vegetarian after the 49 days, and the rest of the family joined in within the next year or two after that. Her recipes are always changing, so at dinner a meal may look “Chinese” (with a bowl of rice) but then the accompanied dishes can range from anywhere like Laos, Thailand, Indonesia, India, Japan, China etc. Or at times a change in a totally different direction with a pizza/lasagne.
All that from a person who claims her English isn’t very good, but will easily translate English language cookbooks borrowed from the local library into Chinese with not much help.
Step into your local libraries and sample some of the Vegetarian cookbooks there. You may surprise yourself on what’s out there. (Not that buying books or finding recipes on the internet is a bad thing, but libraries seem to be a forgotten resource these days.)
Some great tips here. I don’t have any new ones to add, but I will be coming to the meet!
Wiliam, you’re right about libraries. i guess it is our mass affluence that makes it so easy to buy something that we probably won’t read properly rather than borrow it from the library.
Agnes, Cool. See you there.
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