Milk and Alcohol

I started my new regime discreetly.

Knowing my history of failure, I thought it best to keep it to myself. Of course this discretion lasted until the first Sunday, when I served myself a completely different meal to the others. The Mrs then said she would eat what I eat, so the two of us are at it. I didn’t mention that I had also significantly reduced, if not given up all dairy, which meant I was still getting a morning cuppa.  

I had signed up for 3 (three) 30 day vegan challenges. They were all shit. I’m sure they mean well, but their advice is enough to put you off before you start. They assume that as well as meat and dairy, you are also giving up all sense of taste and discernment. They send you an encouraging message as well as a recipe every day, 2 recipes in fact, one for a cook and one for a lazy bastard.

They all recommended lots of processed ready meals and stuff like vegan bacon and burgers and other shit that I wouldn’t touch with a barge pole. What I wanted was inspiration to make easy, tasty food, from proper ingredients, not pretend meat. I’ve never really been a scoffer of ready meals or meat burgers, although it was my utter devotion to bacon that probably did for me in the first place. Prior to starting this new adventure I had grown partial to the occasional Linda Mcartney  mozzarella burger, which I would top with a nice slice of grilled streaky bacon. Proper bacon, from a proper pig, not from some food chemist’s overactive imagination.

It wasn’t long before I just ignored my daily vegan challenge emails, as they  just irritated the shit out of me, although they were useful as a countdown to 30 days. It was a strange time in my head; I hadn’t really decided to adopt  a vegan diet, just to be more mindful about what I eat, and to endeavour to cut meat out of the diet. I still thought I’d eat fish and I did not think that there was any realistic chance of giving up dairy, and wasn’t even going to try……..but I’d signed up for a challenge, and, by fuck, I was going to complete it.

Round about the time I started, Jamie Oliver had a new series on the box….Jamie cooks superfoods, summat like that. Well, Jamie is no ones idea of a vegan, but I got more inspiration and better ideas from him than I did, the various vegan organisations. I could cook stuff for the others, and just omit the meat for me….. his new recipes are very heavy on the veg. I can’t remember what I did now, but it was all nice.

Apart from the milk in the tea, the accidenal cheese in the topping for the fishless pie, the chocolates, the crisps and the alcohol, I was doing alright, I think.