Meat Free Week

Last week was Meat Free Week and despite how stressful it was going to be, I thought it would be a good idea to participate! Tom agreed to do it with me (love that kid) so I found some recipes, made a meal plan, and went shopping on Sunday for all of the ingredients. I kept a "diary" post of the week, and when I remembered I took pictures of the food so that we could keep track of our progress. Here we go...

Monday

Thank god Walker's crisps are vegan, I don't want I would do without them! Lunch today is pasta and pesto (cold, we cooked it yesterday because we knew we'd be in the library/Uni all day today!). I'm not the greatest fan of food that was once hot/should be hot eaten cold but I need to try new things and now's as great a time to start as any!

I'm not sure cold pasta is my favourite dish but it definitely filled us both up. Tom took great pleasure in working out that the meal cost less than a pound for both of us. I swear he's a little old man really!

Our evening meal was roasted vegetables: I roasted potatoes, sweet potatoes, swede (not sure I'd do this one again), and carrots. Roasted carrots may just be my new favourite thing, and my first time trying sweet potato went really well! The best part of this dish was that not only did it taste delicious (even though the veg could have done with 10 minutes more roasting) but it properly filled both of us up! It was a good couple of hours before we both started snacking and seeing as it was because we were doing work I think that's allowed...

Tuesday

A simple meal of jacket potato, beans and cheese for lunch today! It was delicious (if I do say so myself!). Tom told me how to make the skins of the potatoes proper crispy and it made all the difference. Plus we've both been so full, we ate at 12 on the dot and didn't snack until we got to Costa at 4:30... This is great!

Too tired to make the original planned meal tonight (it involved sweet potato purée and that just seemed like more effort than I was prepared to give) so I just adapted what I had! I ended up making cauliflower rice (as planned) with Uncle Ben's Sweet and Sour sauce and a red pepper for good measure.

Making the cauliflower rice was messy - I grated it and it went absolutely everywhere - but cooking it was wonderfully simple! I'm not the greatest fan of Sweet and Sour sauce but it was easy and so I wasn't complaining. The rice was awesome (again, if I do say so myself). Tom couldn't actually believe it wasn't real rice! I definitely want to make this again, just maybe with a nicer sauce.

Wednesday

Today's lunch was macaroni pasta, borlotti beans, tomato sauce (seasoned with rosemary and some fancy Italian oil that Tom has). I'm not sure whether it was the beans themselves, or the way I cooked them but it was pretty terrible today. I don't think we'll be having that dish again!

Tea definitely made up for today's lunch. I made baked aubergine, mashed potato, fried mushrooms and fried onions just for me (Tom can't eat onions). It was lush. Baked aubergine is just so tasty. I also think I perfected the mash today. Actually I smashed the entire meal, I'm really proud of it!! Feeling back on track as well, I had my first 'craving' today: I was coming home from the gym, passed a sign for KFC and then a chicken place and had an overwhelming craving for chicken drumsticks. That's why I'm so pleased with my tea, got rid of that feeling no problem!

Thursday

I would post a picture of today's lunch but I made Tom's packed lunch (pasta, pesto and cheese; brioche buns; Starburst; and grapes) forgot to take a picture and then just had a lunch of crisps, biscuits and coffee myself. All vegetarian but yeah... no picture today!

Tonight's tea was so good. I made us vegetable cawl (potato, swede, carrot, and red lentils cooked in vegetable broth) and Tom cooked vegetarian sausages (this brand). We cut up the sausages and added them to the cawl in the bowls. I was a little apprehensive about the sausages since we've never tried any kind of meat substitute before but ooooh my god they were good! And they went so well with the cawl! I finished my food and then just snacked on Tom's for a bit (much to his annoyance). Plus they're high in protein which is good for The Cyclist; he was starting to worry a bit.

[We actually like the sausages so much we're going to get a few more packs while they're still on offer in Sainsburys!]

Friday

Pasta, pesto, cheese and vegetarian sausage today and man was it good!

Celebrating the end of term (and the end of a considerable amount of stress - for Tom at least) meant that tonight's evening meal was Domino's! I had my usual Cheese and Tomato pizza (how convenient that it's already vegetarian!) and Tom ordered a half 'n' half of two of the veggie options: Vegi Supreme and Veg-a-Roma. He preferred the Veg-a-Roma because it didn't have tomatoes on but he really enjoyed the whole thing!

Saturday

Today has been very slow, very chilled and has involved quite a lot of hungover laziness. As such we've only actually had one meal today but we made up for this by cooking everything we could into our stir fry: noodles, carrots, mushrooms, green and red peppers, garlic, onion (for me) and of course, cut up vegetarian sausages. Tasty seems like such a flimsy word to describe that meal. Tip top fooding by us!

Sunday

Pasta, pesto and cheese again today! Using up the last of the pesto before we both go home for Easter. Tom went home today and so amidst all the washing up and packing, I forgot to take a photo of our lunch! There was no sausage in it this time though - I think we've realised we can't keep putting them with absolutely everything.

Since it was just me eating Sunday night, I decided to combine my favourite meal with cooking as much as I could because it would have to be thrown out otherwise. So of course... cawl! This time I added Quorn chicken and oh wow was it good! It tasted just like chicken!? Weird thing to say I know but I wasn't expecting it to taste so good! Perfect way to end the week!

Sooooo we did it! We successfully went a whole week without eating meat. It was only really difficult when I was stressed (so couldn't be bothered to cook) or when I see a KFC sign apparently. Overall though, I've felt great! I've been absolutely shattered (thank you third year/end of term) but it hasn't felt as debilitating as usual. Like, I've been able to get up easily and it hasn't kept me from doing anything. Plus we've had great, tasty, home cooked meals every day and it has been so nice! This is definitely something I'm going to try to upkeep!