Why your restaurant needs vegan options

I'm not a vegan, I'm not even a vegetarian but I think all restaurants, cafes, clubs, bars, and anywhere that serves food should ensure there are vegan options on the menu.

I don't think that because  it's not nice to eat animals (it may not be, but I still love steak and bacon), I don't think it because it's good for the planet (debatable if you look at what plants can grow where and why sheep may sometimes be the best protein creators..but also farts...) I think it because it's good business sense.

Many people are vegan these days, whether as a hipster lifestyle choice, a deep rooted love for living things or just not really liking meat, the reasons don't matter to a business, what matters is getting customers through the door.

Some cafes seem to think that one veggie option is enough. "Oh we have jacket potatoes with beans if you like, we can leave out the butter if you are vegan". The idea of 'leaving out' the meat or dairy or egg bits seems a common theme. "hmm vegan? well I think the veggie burger might be vegan, I'll leave out the brioche bun and the cheese"  Well let me tell you straight, leaving things out is not a menu option, it's lazy and it looks lazy. It also looks mean, "we'll make you a special meal by leaving stuff out and not replacing it with anything" doesn't look like you are happy to help, it looks like a begrudging afterthought.

Some eateries think it doesn't matter, after all less than 1% of the UK population is vegan and only 2% of the population is vegetarian. But if you miss those choices from your menu you don't only exclude the vegans, you exclude groups of friends where one of the group is vegan. "Shall we have Jake's party at *Umbertelli's? oh no, they have no real vegan options and Jessica won't want to come, let's go to *Palmita's instead" And the number of vegans is increasing, and they tend to be younger, more likely to eat out with friends.

It's not only vegans that benefit either, with increasing awareness of allergies a person with a dairy or egg allergy is going to opt for places with good vegan options too. Religious food restrictions can also affect people, in a multicultural society many religious people struggle to find a place to eat out that caters for them, but vegan is halal and kosher, problem solved. When I'm looking for a location for a works party or a meal out with friends I might include vegans, Muslims, vegetarians and Jews...and some allergy sufferers, it's not being 'precious' to want to be catered for at a restaurant and it's not a lot to ask for the menu to be clear about it either.

Vegan options are not difficult! Add a vegan section to your menu (and mark them as such, use a different symbol for Vegan than for Vegetarian). Examples of vegan meals include falafel wraps with salad, salads with tofu, stir fries with noodles (egg free) , vegetable soups, hummus salad sandwiches with either no spread or a dairy free spread, olives, fancy breads made with oil, pasta dishes (vegan pesto, tomato sauces etc), risottos with either no cheese or vegan cheese, vegetable burgers, stuffed peppers, garlic mushrooms (use oil or dairy-free spread),  Jus-Rol puff pastry is dairy and egg free! so you can even make some puff pastry treats with fruit or roasted vegetables. Pieminister have a vegan pie option. Vegan pizzas, lentil curries. Don't forget to add some vegan desserts too, lots of sorbets are lovely and there are plenty of vegan ice 'cream' varieties to choose from, and exotic fruits in syrup can be a lovely end to a meal.

Anyone can eat vegan, so including some vegan options on a menu doesn't restrict the menu, it expands it. Now I have a vegan daughter I can really see what a pain it is to eat out when 99% of the menu is off limits, so come on caterers, make it easier, step up and add some vegan goodies to your menus.

Are you vegan?  Where is good to eat out and which vegan things do you like to see on a menu?  I recently ate at Zizzis and they have a brilliant menu, clearly set out with vegan options. Are there other good examples out there?

The best Vegan and Vegetarian Sunday lunches in London.

Vegan and Veggie Roasts in Brighton

*not real restaurants

Sweet potato and lentil (vegan) soup

Here is a nice warming soup for the whole family to enjoy. It's vegan but feel free to add bacon bits or cheese if you fancy.

It's cheap and cheerful, healthy, colourful and tasty.

All you need are some sweet potatoes, an onion, vegetable stock (a stock cube is fine), green lentils and some oil.

First chop the onion, I add some garlic too, then fry that until soft in the oil (I used coconut oil)
then pop half a cup of green lentils into another pan to boil in about 2 cups of water.

Peel and dice the sweet potato, add it to the softened onion, add a pint and a half of vegetable stock and let it simmer in a lidded pan.

Once the potato is soft, blend it until it's smooth (a cheap stick blender is perfect for this)  then add the lentils.

I like to serve mine with cheese, because while my daughter is a vegan, I'm not - I think crispy bacon would be good with this too. Otherwise, sprinkle with chilli flakes and serve. Yum.

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Sweet Potato Soup Recipe

I bought a stick blender recently and it is quite simply brilliant. If you have kids that moan about 'lumpy bits' or homemade soup that 'isn't like the shop one' it's a must have.

As it's September I decided to make a soup for Saturday lunch and it's a nice quick one, sweet potato is such a soft root vegetable which makes it great for soup.

So I grabbed

• two onions
• 3 sweet potatoes
• 2 garlic cloves
• tablespoon oil
• vegetable stock cube

and I set to work, peeled and chopped the vegetables to about 2 cm cubes. Lightly fried the onion and garlic in the oil while I dissolved the stock cube in just over a pint of boiling water, and set the potato to simmer in a lidded saucepan.

After the onion was softened I added it to the saucepan and waited. 30 minutes was about long enough to ensure the sweet potato was soft enough to squash with a spoon, so I removed the pan from the heat and used the stick blender to blend down the vegetables into a super thick and tasty soup.

There was enough to serve 2 (or 3 not so hungry people) and served with thickly buttered crusty bread it was delicious. I love a simple soup.

First soup image with title Copyright: somegirl / 123RF Stock Photo all other photos my own

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Parsnip and Ginger Soup - A Meat Free Monday Recipe

I think I might have blogged this before but it's so good I'll blog it twice.

One of my favourite vegetarian cook books is the 'Veg Everyday' one by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall. Not only is it full of great photos, and recipes that would tempt even the most devoted meat eater to try a vege meal, but also the recipes are actually do-able. I am the living proof this is true!

My favourite recipe is the simple lentil dahl. But a little more time and preparation and I can have a bowl of a soup that Hugh calls 'Parsnip and Ginger Soup' but which I call 'Better than sex soup'. I know you all think I need to get more sex based on that - but don't judge until you've tried it.

The soup is relatively easy to make though there are a few steps to take. It is time consuming rather than complicated and you need a food mixer or hand blender to make it properly. It is all worth it though, for its smooth warming and spicy goodness.

The ingredients are fairly simple and while you might not have fresh ginger to hand it's easy to get.

You'll need

• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 15g butter
• 1 large onion, finely chopped
• 2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
• a 4-5cm piece of fresh ginger root, peeled and finely chopped
• 1/4 teaspoon ground cardamom
• 1/4 teaspoon ground cumin
• 1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
• 500g parsnips, peeled and cut into 1cm cubes
• 800ml vegetable stock (Hugh makes his own, I use a vege stock cube)
• 200ml whole milk

You simply fry the onion in the oil and butter for 10 minutes or so, don't crisp it! add in the garlic, ginger and spices, stir it then bung in the parsnips, stir them up to get them coated in the tasty oily goodness, then pour in the stock and simmer it all until the parsnips are soft, about 15-25 minutes.

Leave the soup to cool for a bit, then puree it in a food blender until smooth. Return it to the pan, add the milk and warm it through, add water to thin the soup if you like.

The soup stores well, can be frozen and is lovely served with a sprinkling of toasted nuts and a swirl of thick cream. Maybe even a homemade bread roll.

You can buy Hugh's book all over the place, but here's a link to Amazon.
Enjoy.

Being Vegetarian

I'm not a vegetarian. I'm a lover of the meat, an eater of the flesh, happy to sink my teeth into a red and oozing steak or crunch a piece of crispy bacon and feel animal fats dribble down my chin. But for lent I'm vegetarian. So, "how is it going?" I hear you ask.

Well pretty well actually, as you can see from my opening sentence I'm hardly thinking about meat at all, chops, sausage, burger, sorry what? yes hardly thinking of meat at all. 

Cooking and eating at home has been easy, Using the wonder new cook book and eating plenty of pasta, lentils and noodles, rice and naan bread, potatoes and cheese, no trouble at all. 

Eating out however is a whole different kettle of fish quorn. I need to change the way I get lunch for a start. At work we have a canteen and until recently it did great food including a nice vege dish of the day but it's been taken over (to save money) and the food there is now just bought in (and not very nice, or very hot) microwaved meals; so I need to look elsewhere.Sometimes I remember and make a sandwich when I make lunch for DD but I'll be honest - I never really fancy the packed lunch I make myself, I don't know why, is that just me? Maybe I need a packed lunch partner - we both make a lunch then exchange it at work for a delightful surprise!? 
Any way, buying a vege lunch (eg sandwich, pasty, salad etc) seems fraught with difficulty. "How hard can it be?" you are thinking (unless you are a vegetarian - then you are nodding and muttering "See! See what we have to put up with!") and I thought the same. A cheese sandwich, an egg sandwich, tomato soup, a cheese and potato pasty, that can't be too tricky surely; but it seems that it is. I'm lucky if I can find anything some days, cheese and ham? why add the ham? egg and bacon? chicken salad? what is this? a meat eaters' charter? Today I gave up and caved in to eat a pot noodle. A POT NOODLE these are the depths I have sunk to, if I was a fish I'd have one of those glowing lights dangling in front of my face I've sunk so low.

So vegetarians, where do you 'grab a snack'? do you ever? is life as a vegetarian only possible if meticulously planned? I dread to think how vegans survive outside the safety of their own homes.

Unable to 'rein' myself in any longer, I talk horsemeat ..

Sorry for the late arrival of this blog post, this was caused by the wrong type of meat in a lasagne. 

I wasn’t going to blog about this, the horse meat thing. Everyone else has had a right old go. Probably more eloquently that I will be able to. People have had clever arguments and stupid reactions and hilarious jokes. 

I wasn’t going to talk about it. 

I tweeted a few times, shock at the number of horses there must be somewhere for all this horse meat to have appeared and to be so cheap. The usual shock at people grossed out by having eaten a meat they clearly enjoyed but who now feel nauseous as it contained My Little Pony. Anger that drugs may have entered the food chain due to poor checks. 


And then, and then I heard a chap from a laboratory talking about the testing and explaining they didn’t routinely test for other DNA, they only tested when asked!!!! 

So, unless asked they didn’t test for horse. Are you listening!! This means that unless asked they don’t test for dog either, or rat, or pigmy hippo or….and think on this … or human DNA. 

And then the news hinted that all of this was a huge fraud that the Mafia may be involved…the Mafia. 

And wait, aren’t the ready meals mostly Italian food based? Bolognese, lasagne…. 

So now we know what happens to the rest of the horse after you find the head in your bed, but worse still maybe concrete overshoes and sleeping with the fishes are old hat, maybe, just maybe, "keeping your friends close and your enemies closer" takes on a whole new meaning when your enemies are smothered in Mama’s special Bolognese sauce! 

I’m married to an Italian. He said I should blog this as it made him laugh when I ranted it during the news the other night. If I never blog again. Think of me when you eat meat stuffed tortellini. 

Images Copyright (c) 123RF Stock Photos

I could give it up ... if I wanted to

Last year I wrote about Lent and what importance it may have in this modern world. (You can read that post here)

This year I decided to give up something for Lent. And it was a sudden decision but came of lots of earlier thoughts and talking with a friend at work. 

My friend is vegetarian, I have lots of vegetarian friends (ooh get me! "I'm not vegetarian-ist , some of my friends are vegetarian" ) so I know they are not all weirdos and oddballs (they are but not because they are vegetarian, more because they are my friends...a whole 'nother post - do I like weirdos or make people weird by knowing them?) 

Festival Vegetarian Curries I have known

 

Anyway ...  a while ago you will remember that my vegetarian friend loaned me the fabulous Veg Every day cookery book by Hugh FW (Read that post here) and I've been eating more and more vegetarian meals, so when yesterday we talked about kids, and pancakes, and Shrove Tuesday and then Lent and she asked 'what are you giving up?' I thought about it and said "I don't know, nothing probably" so her reply "Why not give up meat!" made me realise that I could - I could give it a go for 40 days ... that's doable right? 

Mr tumble is excited by Lent! Are you?

 

What are doing for Lent? Do you ignore it? Join in? 

Author's note : I only eat meat about 3 times a week and usually less BUT the longest I have ever gone without bacon is 30 days. Pray for me.

The one where no animals die in the preparation of my dinner

I'm not a vegetarian, but I love vegetarian food, and Indian food, so when a friend of mine offered to lend me her favourite vegetarian cook book (By none other than the famous animal eater Hugh Fearnley-Whatshisname ) I leapt at the chance. And the recipes all looked and sounded great!

But not only that they seemed like they would be easy to make and they sounded tasty! Finally after much scurrying about to find cumin seeds, I cooked the lentil dhal this evening .

And it was so easy, so cheap, so delicious that I've decided I must have a copy of the book for my very own. So if Santa is reading.....

and in all honesty, I recommend you pop it on your Christmas list ... if you don't have a surfeit of cookbooks already, and assuming you've been good this year :-)

Slicing onions (complete with tears - I read on twitter this week that the way to avoid crying when cutting onions was to not get too emotionally attached)

and then boiling the lentils


frying the onions with the cumin seeds

and adding them to the now softened lentils...

and then, grabbing some flat bread and scoffing the dhal!

It has been brought to my attention that this post is not Nigella-y enough. I do apologise.

Remember to take care when eating the dhal by scooping it up in soft flat bread, it could fall into your cleavage, and then where would you be!

The one where I get Nakd and there are pictures........

Ok so having grasped you and your dirty minds……

This is the blog I should have written a week ago but I’ve been ill. -- excuses! Pathetic!

The lovely people at Natural balance Foods know how much I like their Nakd fruit/nut bars because I’ve raved about them online before, so they were keen for me to try the new flavours just out. They sent me the three new flavours to try and I did. (see "I get nakd" ;-- see what I did there?)

I’ve always been more of a fan of the fruity flavours than the chocolate, so I was surprised to see that 2 of the new flavours were chocolate based, I must be in the minority I guess.

If you have never had one of these bars before there things you need to know, they don’t look great, they are (mostly) raw.

So issue one :appearance, to be fair they look like compressed squirrel shit (they actually probably share a lot of the contents too!) but this is not reason to not eat them! Oh no! brave the look and bite into the tempting goodness, due to the fact they are raw all the goodness is still there!

issue two: rawness Just squished into a chunk of tastiness are all the vitamins and minerals and fibre and YUM!

Issue three : taste - they are bloody yummy!

So I tried the new Berry flavour first Berry Delight, and it was delightful! As I said I like the berry flavours and feel I’m getting a huge chunk of my 5 a day at the same time as getting a delicious treat, so that was all good.

Then I tried the Cocoa Delight, and while I wasn’t delighted (I told you I prefer the berry!) it was still yummy, very chocolate-y but not ‘sweet’ like a sickly milk chocolate bar. I do love the texture of the bars too.

And last I tried the Cocoa Mint……….and it blew my mind!!!! It is the tastiest most scrumptiously deliciously minty chocolaty bar of goodness I have ever tasted. Even my normally fussy DD agreed to try a nibble when she smelled the minty loveliness of the bar, and she liked it! Yes people of the world, I have discovered healthy snacks that taste so good they could be junk!!

Run to the shops now before I buy all the mint bars!

(That said, I discovered Gingerbread flavour too and my oh my is that one a taste of heaven too! Can’t get enough of this tasty goodness)

Did I mention they are suitable for vegans, they are all natural, no added sugar, and gluten, wheat, dairy & GM free? cos they are!