veggie food – #ThisGirlEats

Things I’ve Learnt About Food – and Myself! – Since Becoming Vegetarian | #ThisGirlEats

I haven’t eaten meat for six months now. I told myself one day, yep, that’s it. I’m going vegetarian. And, surprisingly, I haven’t looked back.

Read: The Moment I Decided to Become a Vegetarian

It’s hasn’t always been super easy, but it actually hasn’t been anywhere near as difficult as I thought it would be either. Nonetheless, there have definitely been a few things to learn along the way…

Transitioning made the whole thing possible.

It started with leaving meat off our weekly shopping list to cut costs. Then we decided to only eat meat on weekends or when we went out. Then my boyfriend went vegetarian and I set myself some 30 day challenges to see if I could consistently go without too. And then, eventually, I felt confident and comfortable to stop eating meat altogether.

Not feeling forced or rushed into making any sudden decisions is the reason I was happy to make the choices I have, and it’s also how I’ve been able to stick to it since the day I made up my mind.

Online menus are a must.

Although most restaurants do offer veggie options these days, there’s no guarantee they’ll actually be good. You might find yourself stuck with yet another bean burger or vegetable lasagne – both great, sure, but it gets a bit boring after the millionth time.

Researching menus online before going somewhere is an absolute must these days. If I can’t find one, we ain’t going!

*Menu for plant-based pub The Monument in Canterbury*

Cheese > everything.

People ask if I feel healthier since giving up meat and the honest answer is: no.

Partly because not eating meat has nothing to do with how healthy your diet is, but also mainly because, since becoming veggie, cheese has pretty much become my answer to everything. Pepperoni pizza becomes four cheese pizza; chicken pie becomes cheese and veg pie; spaghetti bolognese becomes cheese and tomato pasta; a BLT becomes a cheese toastie… You get the idea.

It’s the easy option, and it’s also bloody delicious, so I’m not really complaining.

Mealtimes do take some imagination.

When you’ve grown up in a “meat and two veg” environment at the dinner table, it can take a little imagination to keep mealtimes interesting once you start leaving meat off your plate.

Because I love being in the kitchen I quite enjoyed having a new challenge but, over time, it’s become much easier to adjust. It’s all about making smart swaps and thinking outside the box to create food that you and your family will continue to love.

Looking for some inspiration? Check out some of my favourite veggie meals to make at home.

I haven’t once gone hungry.

“Vegetarian? What do you even eat, rabbit food?! lolololol.” Well, no, obviously not.

Look at me. Look at my blog. Look at the NAME OF MY BLOG! Of course I’m not going to follow a diet of lettuce leaves and quinoa. Just because I don’t eat meat anymore, don’t doubt for a second I haven’t found new ways to stuff my face whenever I feel like it.

There are so, so many options available now that cater to meat-free and plant-based diets; burgers, sausages, bacon, chicken, steaks, you name it and there’s a veggie alternative out there. I don’t miss out on BBQs, roast dinners, takeaways, meals out or any of that good stuff (thanks Linda McCartney 😉).

*Linda McCartney’s vegetarian hoisin duck meal kit*

With the right mindset, I can achieve things I never thought possible.

This is something I definitely learnt about myself when I decided to become a vegetarian.

If you told me just a few years ago that I’d make a free, conscious choice to no longer eat meat, I would never have believed it. I would’ve said I don’t have the willpower, I’d miss out on too many foods I love, I’d never be able to stick with it, bla bla bla.

But I’ve proven to myself that I can stick with it and I do have power over my food choices. I am able to resist things, I can turn certain food down, and I can set myself a goal and see it through.

Now it’s time to take that new revelation about myself and apply it to other parts of my life, because I know that I can.

The Moment I Decided to Become a Vegetarian | #ThisGirlEats

I’ve been vegetarian for three months now and haven’t fallen off the wagon once, which I absolutely thought I would! One question people ALWAYS ask upon finding out I’ve gone veggie is: why? So, if you happen to be one of those people, I can pinpoint the exact moment I decided to become a vegetarian.

I’d not really eaten meat for a month or so because, at the start of the year, I set myself a few little foodie challenges – just to test myself, really. One of those challenges was to go meat-free for January, which wasn’t pretty easy, especially as my boyfriend doesn’t eat meat so it wasn’t a massive part of our diet anyway.

But I never went into that challenge with the intention of giving up meat for good. I’d already reduced my animal consumption in a huge way so didn’t feel the need to push myself any further and was already proud of what I’d done. The first thing I did after completing my meat-free month? I went straight to McDonald’s and bought a chicken and bacon wrap. I didn’t even hesitate.

Well, I say that, but I suppose that’s not completely true. I’d definitely started having feelings of guilt around eating meat since Andy became veggie, thinking about the animals, the environment, all that stuff we know is a affected by animal produce. And feeling guilty around food really isn’t good for me. I’d been working super hard to remove the idea of guilt from my food (and still am!) so having to deal with the repercussions of meat leading to a pang of guilt every time was something I’d already started to struggle with.

Anyway, so I went to Maccy’s for this chicken wrap that I was really craving, took it back to my desk, started to munch away on the familiar delicious taste.. But then I bit into one piece of chicken that had obviously slipped through the cracks in quality control because it was truly DISGUSTING. It was tough, chewy, just absolutely revolting.

I spat it straight out and then thought to myself: why am I doing this?

Like, seriously. Why?

This food was completely gross and all I could think was that this animal definitely didn’t need to die for this crap! It was totally unnecessary for this living, breathing creature to have its life cut short just to make a sub-par, cheap, inedible wrap that literally no-one needs to be eating. It’s cruel, it harms the environment, it’s bad for your health and the end product didn’t even taste good!

I just thought to myself, you know what? I can live without this. So I did.

From the moment I threw that dodgy McDonald’s in the bin, I haven’t eaten meat at all. I’m not going into the pros and cons, I’m not going to preach or badger, I’m not going to do any of that. But if you wondered how I ended up a vegetarian, that’s your answer.

5 Great Tips on How to Cut Down Supermarket Spending | #ThisGirlEats

Lots of people said they found one of my recent posts about saving money on our weekly shop pretty helpful (‘We Cut Down Our Family Food Shop to £25 Per Week – And Now There’s No Looking Back! Here’s How…‘) which is, obviously, bloomin’ awesome!

So I thought I’d follow it up (sort of) with a few little tips and tricks on exactly how we stick to our shopping budget. I touched on a few things here in the previous post, but hopefully this goes into a little more detail and is useful enough to perhaps give you one or two ideas on how to save a few extra quid on your own food shop.

Make full use of scan ‘n’ go.

Many supermarkets now offer an in-store system where you pick up a little handset and scan the items yourself as you shop, then simply connect the scanner to a till at the end of your shop and pay the total.

As well as being super quick and convenient, this fairly new way of shopping can really help you save money. As you scan the item, its price will show on the screen and you can keep an eye on the total cost of your trolley as you go. This can be incredibly useful if you’re trying to be mindful of how much you’re spending and can stop you going over budget. We all know how easy it is to just pull things off the shelves and end up spending way more than planned, so these scan and go systems are a pretty handy tool.

Stay away from the reduced section, unless you have lots of willpower.

This might sound like an unusual one. It’s fair to say the reduced section of the supermarket does have some great price cuts and if you stumble across a good bargain then it’s well worth it.

But the problem with the reduced section is that it also persuades us to buy things we don’t really need. I don’t think I’ve ever been lucky enough to find anything from my shopping list hidden in the reduced section, but I have found plenty of other tempting treats lurking there, like half price ready meals and cream cakes. That’s all well and good, but if you’re looking to keep costs at a minimum you’re likely to be swayed into spending unnecessary pennies in this aisle so, unless you’ve got tremendous willpower, I’d say you’re better off just steering clear altogether.

Don’t forget about the world food aisle.

You might think that going for supermarket value brands is always going to be the cheapest options and, in the majority of cases, you’d be right. But there are a few ingredients you can actually pick up at a cheaper price if you just check out the world food aisle.

Black beans, for example, are 65p in ASDA if you go for the supermarket brand. However, in the world food section you’ll find a tin of Sammy’s Black Beans exactly the same size for 50p. Again, 400ml of ASDA coconut milk will cost you 79p whereas 400ml of Caribbean Choice coconut milk comes in at just 63p. This isn’t the case with every product, but it’s a similar story in most major supermarkets and is worth having a look to save some extra money. Check on comparison websites (mysupermarket.com is always a good shout!) to find the cheapest option before you shop.

Be careful bulk buying fruit and vegetables.

Large, prepackaged bags of onions, potatoes, apples, bananas, etc. can seem quite good value for money, and that’s because they often are. If you quite regularly use fresh ingredients when you cook, or your family eat quite a lot of one particular fruit or veg, buying in bulk is great value for money.

But be careful with this. If you only need one or two portions of a certain fruit or vegetable, it’s probably worth just picking up exactly what you need. It might not strike you as the best value option at first, but think about whether you’re going to actually eat it all. If it’s going to go off and get thrown out, then that’s the absolute opposite of saving money. Basically, the advice here is if you’re using a large quantity of a particular produce then buy in bulk but, if you’re not, just pick up what you need from the loose fruit and veg crates so nothing goes to waste.

Don’t buy so much meat!

I’m not just saying this as a veggie – I’m saying this as someone who only turned veggie because they literally couldn’t afford to buy meat! Even without taking anything else like ethics or the environment into consideration, you’ve got to admit that cutting down on meat will almost always equal cutting down on costs.

Even if you don’t go full-on veggie, you can always just consider making some swaps here and there to save a few pennies. For example, in ASDA (I’m using this supermarket again because it’s my local), 500g of even the cheapest, fattiest mince costs £1.89, while a 454g packet of their own brand meat-free mince costs only £1.50 and has waaay less fat in it (500g of leaner, lower fat mince ranges from £2.28 to £3.31!). Also, you can get 6 Quorn Meat Free Chicken Fillets (approx. 300g) for £1.70, whereas 250g of actual chicken mini fillets costs £1.99. See, we’re not just pushing an agenda – it really can save you money!

I Gave My Boyfriend a New Recipe to Make By Himself, This is What Happened! | #ThisGirlEats

We like a challenge. Last week, I decided to challenge both myself and my boyfriend. I always cook but, since we started scheduling our entire lives around the World Cup, Andy got home before me and offered to make dinner so no-one was cooking by time the England game started. Which is great, but his idea of cooking generally involves transferring food from the freezer to the oven. You know, fine, but a bit uninspiring.

That’s when I came up with the GENIUS idea – to test run one of my recipes! This was brand new, something totally made up and never tried before. Philly cheese “steaks” made with aubergine and sweet potato fries on the side (find the recipe here) is tricky, I won’t lie. I really did throw him in at the deep end!

I left the ingredients and a very detailed recipe, but didn’t want to make things too easy with hints of “Maybe you should do it this way…” I just sat on the sofa quietly and waited. That was my challenge!

And you know what? He only went and bloody did it! It went really well, too. I’m actually incredibly proud of how he pulled it off, he made everything as it should be and it tasted amazing!

It just goes to show that a-n-y-o-n-e can cook. As long as you’ve got ingredients and a recipe to follow it doesn’t matter about the bumps along the way, something messy and delicious and wonderful can still come out of it. If my boyfriend can do it, so can you!

But just to prove that it doesn’t always go perfectly, here are just a few of the more stressful moments from Andy’s time in the kitchen…

“Does aubergine go bad if you cut it and then leave it out? Like avocado?” – good question! No idea tbh.
“What consistency am I looking for here?” – it’s sauce, babe. It’s meant to be the consistency of.. sauce.
“Mate, it’s REALLY hot in here.” – I say this all the time, it’s now fully appreciated just how bloody hot our kitchen gets.
“This is crazy, I’m trying to get ready and cook everything at the same time!” – literally every. day. of. my. life. Get used to it hun.

Recipe: Veggie Philly Cheese “Steaks” with Sweet Potato Fries