Meat-free Mondays? For a Vegetarian?

Meat-free Mondays are a concept of which I am aware, I didn't really know who or how it started it, but I knew it was an environmental/ethical movement to try to reduce the amount of meat eaten, and therefore the inhumane conditions, waste products and general unenvironmentalness that meat-eating entails. I think it's a good idea in principle. Why people think that just because they "can" they therefore "should" or "need to" eat meat with every meal is beyond me. I mean, plenty of people only used to meat once a week less than 50 years ago, why is that we now think we won't make it past the end of the day without meat?

So anyway, I would like to get involved with meat-free mondays, but as I already have meat-free mondays, and tuesdays, wednesdays, thursdays, fridays, saturdays and sundays I thought I would do animal-free mondays. I have a fairly animal free week already as I use soya milk and margarine and rarely eat honey. It's cheese, yoghurt and saturday morning boiled eggs that wreck it! As well as any ingredients in products made from these things.

Most of the time I think I should be vegan, and I ashamed to say the only reason I am not is because I can't be bothered, and I like eating out a lot. Not very moral or ethical reasons eh? Most of the time we are pretty much vegan at home, but as I say, things creep in.

So from tomorrow onwards I am doing animal-free mondays!

It was only after starting to write this post that I discovered the website for MFM:
http://www.supportmfm.org/index.cfm

And thus discovered they recommend animal free for vegetarians.

Adventures with an organic veg box!

So my first Abel&Cole organic box arrived today. It arrived just as I was leaving for work but i didn't have time to do anything with it. Even though I had looked at what was on the list I was still excited to see what had come.

I feel really good about this new lifestyle change. I hope I can keep up with all the cooking that it demands. I love the fact we are no longer buying eggs or milk from the supermarket, and hopefully the bread will be nice and will freeze well so we can buy bread from them too. I am considering giving up eggs and milk entirely, especially after reading this article which admittedly is about slaughterhouses, but the poor cows and chickens do all end up somewhere, not to mention the majority of the male offspring. I originally became vegetarian because of video footage showing (not quite as bad as) this sort of thing. I just don't want to be responsible for that sort of treatment to animals. Anyway, that is totally another post!

So, I got home and we have carrots, leaks leeks (that was a total typo, there are no leaks, that I know of, although apparently in glasgow many people's pipes are busting with all this freezing weather), potatoes, onions (although I kind of think maybe they came from somewhere else as they are not on the receipt, but they certainly weren't there when I left the house this morning!), fennel, ramiro pepper, cherry tomatoes, oranges, kiwis and bananas. I am a bit slow on the uptake and was really surprised to see the mud still on my vegies!! lol!

I am going to make leek and fennel risotto. What does fennel even taste like anyway? I have no idea whether I will even like this food, but how do you know if you don't try? I can always tell them I don't like it and then they won't send it.

Then as i was sat pondering what to do with the vegies there was a sharp knock at the door and there stood our local greengrocer, the one we used to get our veg from, but now we have a veg box...

Seems Mr Brown Eyes has bought up pretty much their entire shop! They sell lots of on-the-way-out-of-date food from health food shops, organic shizzle for dead cheap, most of our kitchen looks like a Holland & Barrett stock room at the best of times. I have no idea where this new stuff will go, it won't fit in the kitchen. I wonder what it even is!

Anyway, often to find out whether I like fennel!

Local or Organic?

As a vegetarian I eat a reasonable amount of vegetables. I buy most of these from the local greengrocer, who sources as much stock as possible from local farmers, but not all. I buy top-ups from asda. I also buy bits and bobs from waitrose. We do a big shop either by going to Tesco, or more frequently these days from ocado online (we are going up in the world!), and will always get some veg in that shop too.

I have some thoughts - don't we all? - about supermarkets. Most of them negative ones. I have some thoughts about supermarkets specific to fruit and veg too. A friend of mine's dad is a farmer and he was telling me about some of the things that supermarkets do to farmers. One such example was that they over-fruit and then insist the farmers buy back the rotting stock that didn't sell. Of course they buy it at ridiculously cheap prices to start with. Farmers are in lose-lose. Leo Hickman's ethical auditors said anyone trying to live more ethically should avoid supermarkets. He switched to an organic veg box scheme.

We have been considering an organic veg box scheme for a while, but weren't sure we wanted to take money away from the local greengrocer. However, they used to deliver to us, but were a bit useless at it, now they don't do it at all. We have to remember to go and get things from them, and they aren't just "over the road" like they used to be. I find I am increasingly buying things from supermarkets and this somewhat distresses me. The supermarket though is more convenient (for me, if not the planet). Leo Hickman's ethical auditors (in his book "My Life Stripped Bare") say that anyone trying to live more ethically should try to reduce their supermarket shopping. I have some friends who manage to not go to the supermarket, except waitrose. So I feel I should try.

Looking into box schemes I read a story about a farmer who was given a large rush order by a supermarket, and he paid people to pick and pack his lettuces, and just as they were ready for delivery he got a call from the supermarket saying they no longer wanted them, they had overestimated. Now picked the lettuces would go off (except this story has a happy ending - the box scheme people bought them all, and presumably they won't make him buy any rotting ones back again, so he won on that one).

Add to this that the supermarkets insist on certain cosmetic characteristics for their veg, they also charge a premium for organic foods thereby making them less available to lower income people. I haven't even touched on the packaging they use, or the even higher amounts of packaging they use on their loose fruit and veg...

So, I have had to weigh up buying locally from a very small business to buying organic from a larger business, but one which does support smaller local farmers, reduces packaging, and has zero air miles.

It will be a big change, harder to plan meals in advance, having to eat seasonally, but a step that feels like the next logical step. We can cancel if we find it isn't working, but I feel like it is really my duty to make it work. I think we will go with Abel & Cole. They also sell milk, bread, ecover washing products, toilet roll, tofu, beer, wine etc etc etc. There is almost no need to ever go in a supermarket again.

I have veg for this week, so I think I will start it next week. I am really looking forward to it.

Chicken or Egg? Or Cat?

I have been vegetarian for over 13 years, getting towards half of my life. For the past year or so I have been considering taking this to the natural conclusion of veganism. Last year I gave up cows milk (although somehow it crept back in, I think it might go out again this year). I only eat organic dairy when I eat dairy.

My eggs come from a local farmer, who doesn't use organic feed but does meet all the welfare requirements for organic, so I am happy with that. I couldn't see the problem with eggs on a small scale... the hen lays the egg whatever, in fact I do believe, but this could be myth, that they lay more the happier they are, so there is motivation to keep the hen on your side! The eggs they ave laid are not fertilised and so were never going to be chicks. Obviously in large scale farming them some chicks are hatched in order to get new hens and the cocks are killed. There are also welfare issues in standard farming, and even in free-range farming colonies are often too big and hens are de-beaked. (If you don;t know about de-beaking you should google this).

I started thinking I would like my own chickens. They are funny anyway, I quite like to watch chickens. Plus if I kept them myself I could ensure good diet, good conditions and love. Plus I would get eggs and could eat them guilt-free.

Then yesterday I was reading about how tiring it is for hens to lay eggs, and how really if their egg is not fertilised they like to eat it themselves in order to regain some of the lost nutrients. So, even if i kept my own hens maybe i still shouldn't eat the eggs? Maybe I could collect a couple of the eggs and let them have the rest? Would that be a compromise?

Then what about the cat I want to get? Pet owning was discussed in a previous entry. I could hardly have a cat and chickens, that wouldn't be very fair on either of them.

I just watched a video of a man who keeps chickens because he doesn't want a pet like a cat or a dog that just eats food and gives nothing back. Maybe I should get a chicken or 2 instead? I would have to construct somewhere safe so the foxes don't get them though...

we had a white christmas, and a green christmas!

It snowed on christmas day, for maybe the first time in my entire life! We already had snow on the ground, then it snowed just past midnight, we were still up and saw it, and so we had the snow in the garden, and about a quarter of an inch of fresh snow. Apparently bookies paid out on bets of white christmas in nottingham.

So one colour was fixed, what about the other? Green?

Of course the ultimate green christmas would have been sitting in the dark without a christmas tree eating food foraged or gained freganistically meditating or something.

Obviously I didn't take things that far, but I made some green choices where I could.

• we ate vegetarian (as I always do, but some of the other 7 wouldn't normally)


• I home cooked a vegan loaf to reduce a) animal products and b) packaging and processing costs


• I bought all veg british and where possible locally grown


• I have already talked about the ethical dilemma I had with the christmas tree and how i resolved this (I bought a real tree in a pot which I intend to keep for next year and beyond)


• all my decorations are made of natural materials, no plastic whatsoever (although to be fair, at least part of this is aesthetics!)


• I didn't buy a single card or piece of wrapping paper - I made cards (although I did use new card, but hopefully people will like them and treasure them), and I used pre-used paper

I bought people ethical gifts where possible -

• my husband got a recycled bicycle tyre belt and


• some recycled computer keyboard cufflinks!


• My mum got a fair trade afghan blown glass wine glass

People also know I like these things too, and I received a ring made from a teaspoon handle, and some table mats and coasters made from recycled fireman's hose.

I also received Leo Hickman's book - A Life Stripped Bare, Anthony Gidden's Politics of Climate Change and Time Out's Great Train Journey's of the World. I did a train holiday this year and believe this is without a doubt the ultimate way forward.

To improve my green christmas for next year i need to:

• reduce produced items such as real eat roast


• buy fairtrade crackers (if I had known about these before I bought mine I would have bought them, but I already had some. Of course some people say that crackers are a terrible bane for the environmentalist, this is somehting I shall have to think about. I did put all the recyclables in the recycling though)


• more green presents for others


• less electric lighting and more candles


• cards made from recycled materials


• reuse this year's tree

A petty problem

We are currently a no-pet family, although I am hoping we will be getting cats, rescue cats, 2 of them, after Christmas. That was until my husband read an article in the Guardian saying that some pets are worse for the environment than an SUV. My first instinct was to be outraged. I want a cat, how can a cat be worse for the environment than an SUV? (To be fair, cats aren't it's medium and large dogs which are, according to the article). Then having gotten over my outrage I decided to think rationally - if cats really are that bad for the environment then maybe I shouldn't get two, or even one. It's no good only listening to the green info I want to hear.

I arranged my thoughts into some sort of order and then read the Leo Hickman (who I do really like, I subscribe to his blog, but must have missed this post, I have his books on my amazon wish list too!) article. So, the article is quoting research from Time to Eat the Dog by Robert and Brenda Vale which finds that a cat requires 0.15 global hectares to keep it fed, the equivalent of driving a VW golf for 10000 miles a year, plus the energy required to make the car in the first place. So my two cats is almost at the energy cost of buying a 4.6 litre Toyota Landcruiser and driving it for 10000 miles a year (0.41 global hectares). Luckily I don't drive a Toyota Landcruiser as well then!

My next thoughts all concern the fact that I would be getting a rescue cat, so that cat is already having that footprint regardless of whether I own it or not. So actually so long as I promote responsible pet owning and only get a rescue cat I should probably get the cats so as to reduce the load on the shelters. Plus if it is going to be having the footprint anyway someone might as well get the joy from it, which I would.

My next thoughts all concern all the positives about having a pet. For instance, the joy and love that I myself would get. Then there is the positive personal and social impact that pets have on children (which I don't have yet, but would like to, although of course they have a far larger footprint than a cat, no joke). The article also explained some additional benefits - people with pets have greater immunity and visit the doctor less, 21% less when they are elderly, how many global hectares does that account for one wonders. Plus the mental health benefits that pets bring.

I would also think I might be less likely to go out if I had a pet thereby reducing my consumption and waste in shops, pubs, restaurants and cinemas. Of course I don't drive a car at all, very often. We have a small car between us which neither of us drive very often. I walk to work and get the bus and train further afield, despite the additional time, money and stress costs that this can often entail. I take all my compostable waste to work, I bring home any recyclable waste from work. That's right - I carry bags of waste to and from work despite the fact I walk, often in the rain - because it is the right thing to do. I don't eat any animals (that themselves have an eco footprint), I try to minimise my plastic consumption, I try not to fly. I pay extra to have 100% renewable electricity from Good Energy. We try not to have the heating on, and didn't turn it on at all until December this year (except one freakishly cold day in November).

I don't think that doing that means I can do anything I like, indeed I hate to hear people say, "I can do this ungreen thing because I recycle most of my stuff at home". But actually, surely I have reduced my footprint by that of a cat, so I am still on a positive even if I do have a cat? Plus the fact that my children will be more socially adaptable and I will use the NHS less later in life, and I will go out less. Maybe all these things add up to a cat having less of a footprint than it would seem?

I do think we should consider the ecological footprint of activities we partake in and lifestyle choices we make, but I don't think that means we have to not do anything which carries a number, which everything does. It's a case of weighing up pros and cons, and making thoughtful choices. How many global hectares does going to a pub every friday and saturday take? How many global hectares for out of date food which has been thrown away (I eat yoghurts 2 months out of date), how many global hectares to buy a newspaper every day? How many to have a cup of tea every day?

I appreciate the article for giving me the chance to consider the impact of having a pet (which I already had from a vegetarian standpoint, but i think this post has maybe been going on for long enough!) and I have added the book to my wish list, but I have weighed it all up and will still be getting my cat in the new year :)

(do you know I didn't even discuss the indoor cat/outdoor cat arguments, maybe I will do that when I have the cat)

Turkelicious... Or, On being vegetarian

The other day I heard a group of people bemoaning their Christmas poultry. Turkeys, they say, are dry. They would rather not eat them, but that is what they are given. They talk about how they leave them on the plate, or how they endure them with no satisfaction. Yet still they eat them.

As they are defiling the bird does the thought never cross their mind that before being on their plate causing such offence and displeasure it was actually a living, breathing creature? I shouldn't think the turkey much wants to be eaten, never mind being eaten by people who actually don't even like it.

I found the whole conversation offensive. I have actually been vegetarian for 13 years now (with a brief period of pescetarianism, which has long since passed, save for a very short fish eating holiday whilst in Japan, it didn't make me feel big or clever, and was only ever a foray). A few years ago I started to only eat organic dairy and eggs (except for some local eggs from a local farmer who only keeps a small colony and doesn't debeak - so essentially organic except for the feed, organic in terms of welfare) due to living conditions. The deal breaker with the eggs was when i found out that free range egg-laying chickens are frequently debeaked.

About 18 months ago though a realisation, that I think I had been suppressing, came to the forefront of my mind like a thunder clap, and it's hung around like a bad smell since, if it's OK to mix metaphors like minestrone soup. I realised that my whole moral position was invalid.

I became vegetarian after learning about the conditions in which meat animals are kept and killed. Not so much that they are actually killed, more the way in which they were. With time I felt less strongly about this, and more about the health benefits of limiting (to zero in this case) meat intake and increasing plant based foods. Now my position is a mixture of both of those and also more strongly the eco argument. I think it would be fair to say I was an environmental vegetarian.

I haven't actually read that article but in short I believe it is very inefficient in terms of food, water and fuel to eat a meat based diet. I also believe the meat industry to be more polluting, and in some cases toxic. I understand there is a book I need to read called The Vegetarian Myth which deals with whether this is actually the case. At this stage I will state that I have always said that if we were to go back to traditional farming methods and crop rotations and as such we needed animals for manure that I would not really know where I stood. Although I don't see why we would need to eat the animals until they died of natural causes anyway, and at that point there wouldn't be enough for everyone to eat... Anyway, I digress.

So, environmental vegetarian, yes? Yep. Except that then, as I was saying before, I realised my entire moral view fell down. What about the food, water, fuel and pollution associated with the egg and dairy industry? What about the young cockerels and the young calves condemned to death by those same industries? Wasn't I just supporting those? Oh dear. So I toyed with becoming vegan, and this is where I think the morality lies. It's just such a lifestyle change that I don't think I can be bothered. What a weak argument. It guilts me to think that thought let alone say it out loud or blog about it!

I decided to become a "social vegetarian", that is akin to a social smoker where one is a non-smoker except in social situations. I would be a non-vegetarian except in social situations (people's houses, restaurants etc). I would not want to use the word vegan and water down the tremendous will power and effort put in by people who do eliminate ALL animals products from their lives. I did very well for about 7 months - I did still eat eggs, but stopped drinking cows milk, only rarely ate cheese, bought soya alternatives etc. I don't eat a dairy marg anyway. I don't really know what happened with all that. I think I will start it up again. In fact I see a challenge coming on - vegan for a week, how do I do? Then I can try a month etc.

I was having a conversation with a fellow vegetarian last night, I was saying I should grow some backbone and give up eggs and dairy, and he was agreeing, saying he was from a hindu family and that he believed the hindu diet to be the most moral. Then some other people joined in, a couple, where one would like to be vegetarian and one wouldn't, and the one that would feels she can't because of the one that won't. Then someone else joined in saying, "There is no such thing as vegetarian anyway, only carnivores and vegans".

What a crock of shit. What am I then? A carnivore? Hrmmm. I mean, I know she is making my argument (with a thai chicken curry on her plate, mind), but I do believe that anything you do is better than doing nothing.

Of course even what seems to be such a simple line of reasoning such as this does throw open conundrums... Packing, storage and transportation of vegan products may be less energy efficient for starters.

Soya has its own anti-arguments, but there are other alternatives to soya. Not Tiger White though, my god, that substance sounds like the answer, but tastes like the devil! I am a firm believer that you can make yourself like anything if you just keep eating it. Anything except Tiger White.