Liz lives in Stoke-on-Trent in the UK, is in her late thirties and went veggie when she was 15. In August 2006, she decided to go vegan, a decision she has never regretted for a minute. She loves to cook, has a kitchen crammed full of weird ingredients, and makes all her holiday decisions based on food! She's also a keen Evertonian and follows Everton round the world. This gives her a good chance to try and get vegan food in many interesting places!
I got my first organic vegetable box around 13 years ago. It wasn’t a box; it was a yellow carrier bag, and it cost £5 each week. You just got what they gave you and had to pick it up from a local health food shop. At a time when you couldn’t get organic vegetables at all in supermarkets, it was quite a novelty and I didn’t know anyone else who had one.
Over the years different companies have come and gone and I have tried a number of vegetable boxes. I’m particularly happy with the company I use at the moment. I can let them know if there are ingredients we don’t want (in our case that’s parsnips and sprouts. I like both but my husband won’t touch them so they end up rotting). I can also let them know if there’s something I don’t want that particular week. I think that’s true of most companies these days, so if you are worried by the thoughts of hundreds of turnips, then don’t be!
I do like eating organic food and most of what we get in the box is local and seasonal. But my favourite part of getting a vegetable box is that it forces me to try new things and be creative. If I go shopping and choose my own I’ll end up with the same stuff each week. Some of our favourite dishes have only ever been tried because we had some vegetable box ingredients to use up. It isn’t always easy, especially with a slightly fussy husband to cook for. But I think its well worth it.
As I write, the list of what we’re getting this week has just appeared on the website. For just £10 I’ll get potatoes, carrots, onions, leeks, cabbage, purple sprouting broccoli, cucumber, aubergine and something to replace the parsnips (or more of something else). My mind is already racing – Paul Gayler’s recipe for pasta with chickpeas and purple sprouting broccoli? Or will I be able to find farro for that lovely looking Denis Cotter recipe? Cabbage Thoran from Rose Elliot? – and where have I recently seen a recipe for potato and carrot curry that could go with it? I’ve still got a celeriac left from last week – shall I make mash with it tonight? And can I use up the rest of last weeks leeks at the same time? And what on earth will I do with the cucumber – get some vegan yoghurt and make raita for the curry? Make some salad with it for work lunch boxes? And just how much of it will go in soup?
It’s not always easy, but it is always fun, and definitely forces me to try some things. It supports small businesses and local farmers. The box is reused many times and nothing in it is individually wrapped so it cuts down on packaging. It tastes great and it keeps my meals healthy and varied. What’s not to like??
Here a couple of on-line recipes I like which use up some of my veg box ingredients very well! Do let me know your favourites!
Thai hot and sour salad with crispy tofu
You can put lots of combinations of veg in it but it MUST include the swede. I usually use carrot, peppers, swede and spring onions. I like the Taifun Japanese tofu for this dish.
Chickpea noodle soup
I always include the greens – cabbage, spinach or kale. I can’t find celery seeds anywhere so I use fennel seeds instead. About the only soup my husband will eat as a main meal!
Ginger sesame noodles with broccoli
Great just as it is!
There’s a lot of debate about “fake” meat. Some people can’t understand why vegetarians want to eat something that imitates meat and some vegetarians eat them an awful lot. I’m somewhere in the middle. I don’t rely on them, or use them often, but there are some products I do like. Some of my meat eating family do like some of the products but I’d never serve them to a meat eater otherwise. I’d much rather prove that vegan food doesn’t rely on these products and that you can make tasty meals without them. But on a hungover Saturday morning, I’m afraid a sausage butty hits the spot like no kind of healthy natural alternative ever could!
Let me start though by clarifying an issue about “fake” meat. In my opinion, tofu, seitan and tempeh aren’t at all fake meats. They are natural products which have been used for years and years and are food products in their own right. I use them a lot – tofu more so since it’s easier to get. I can get tempeh in jars locally but seitan I can only get on a trip to Birmingham. I know you can make your own but I haven’t attempted it yet.
“Fake” meats are the products that you can buy which imitate meaty products – sausages, burgers, bacon, mince etc. On our recent trip to America we were blown away by the quality of some of these products. Shops are full of them, there’s a huge range and they’re generally much better than the stuff we can get here. Still, things are improving here and if you look outside supermarkets there are quite a range of products. Some of them are better than others and everyone likes different things, but here’s a rundown of the ones I like:
Taifun sausages. Taifun seem to be a German brand and they also produce excellent tofu. The sausages are the best all round sausages I’ve found. They’re only made with natural products yet they don’t have that bland taste which is associated with tofu at all. They are great fried for when the hangover really hits, but they are still nice and moist when grilled. They come plain or spicy – both great.
Redwood sausages. Redwood are a great company. Everything they produce is vegan and they do a range of sandwich “meats”, sausages, roasts, fish products and even cheeses. (I’m sure I’ll return to vegan cheese another time). I’ve currently got some of the new chorizo chunks on order to try too. My faves are the merguez sausages – great in stews or casseroles.
Realeat fishcakes. As I mentioned above, Redwood do a whole range of fishfingers, spreads etc, but I like these fishcakes best. They’re cheaper and more solid. My guilty secret is white bread, tomato sauce and a Realeat fishcake. Yum. Realeat also do sausages. They used to be my favourites before I discovered the Taifun ones but they’re very fatty. They work well as part of a breakfast but no use at all in a stew.
Fry’s sausages are very nice but I find them very expensive and a close look at the ingredient list reveals them to be very high in salt.
Another company I have been buying recently is Ambrosian. I get them in the freezer of my local health shop. I don’t use them at home but once cooked they keep really well in tin foil so they’re great if you’re travelling and don’t know where your next meal will come from. I’ve tried the cheesy bean pasties (miles nicer than they sound), and the sosage rolls.
A word about Quorn!
I was never all that fond of Quorn even as a vegetarian. (Quorn is not suitable for vegans as it contains egg white). I found the sausages incredibly dry and unappetising. Some products were better than others and I did sometimes use the chunks for curries etc. Really, I became lazy, because I make the same curries now but use tofu and vegetables and they’re much nicer. I’m shocked though, when I go into my local Sainsbury’s and see row after row of Quorn stuff, squeezing out all the smaller brands and even the own brand vegetarian products. Even sometimes now on pub menus Quorn is used instead of thinking of a proper vegetarian option (step forward, Wetherspoons!) I’d urge people to use their local health shops (if they have them), and write to their supermarkets and pubs asking for a wider range of companies to be represented.
Please do let me know about your likes and dislikes in the “fake meat” world! And I promise that next time I’ll talk about real food!
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