Lurkers

[Guest guest]

Hi - I have been a lurker here for a while. We (self and partner) have been

proud veggies for 30 years. Our style of veggie is the wholefood approach. We

tend to waste very little, since to us veggie also means you throw away so much

less than any meat eater - and that's through the entire buying, preparing,

cooking, eating, reusing, cleaning and disposing process.

 

Back in our early days when we started vegetating restaurant choice was largely

limited to Omelette & Chips (English chips that is!). These days every

restaurant we go to has a veggie section.

 

A couple of our best friends are demi-veg, by which I mean they eat fish when

out. But that is not us.

 

Our two (grown) kids have been raised on a veggie diet. We only cooked veggie

for them but allowed them to make their own choices out of the home. They are

almost now more veggie than we are, with one aspiring to veganism.

 

One thing that I love about our style of veggie cooking is the way almost ALL

the nutrition from the food is naturally moved to the plate. Another thing is

the way we can cook many dishes on a very low heat.

 

The basis for many meals is what I call a Stewp. This is always prepared in a

heavy Le Creuset pan with a sealed lid. It goes as follows:

 

Very gently " fry " onions in water, add other members of the onion family, eg

celery, garlic, peppers & stir. If adding spices do so now & stir. Chop and

add root vegetables. Start with root vegetables and add greens at latter

stages. Now add any prepared pulses. Always add in order of length of cooking.

Chop them to size so they all end up being cooked at a similar time. Add any

herbs, salt and black pepper.

 

Now let me talk about pulses. Sometimes you may want a thick broth, and for

that I lean towards red split lentils since they can be prepared quickly in a

separate pan and after bringing to the boil and pureed with liquidiser they are

ready to add.

 

Sometimes, especially if the dish is heavy in chillies, then I might just add a

tin of chick peas and no extra water. So all the vegetables are steamed

together. If I am heading down this route then getting the veg chopped up so

they cook to the same timescale is more critical.

 

Sometimes I will make a cheese sauce probably made with very strong cheddar.

 

Anyway that's our basic cooking day-to-day style.

 

regards

 

Andy, Oxford, UK