Coping with Vegetarianism
February 28th 2009 07:23
Eating out
Many places cater for vegetarians but they do vary on the options available to vegetarians. A bar, for example, isn't a good place to get a decent veggie meal. They tend to only have chips (which you will need to check to see what they are cooked in) and salads, which is just plain boring. I have noticed that Asian restaraunts are excellent at providing non meat eaters with variety. There's a place in good old Wellington called Aunty Mena's and it is completely vegetarian. Even if you don't feel like this type of meal, you can ask the waiter (nicely) to leave out the meat and have the chef cook up a veggie friendly alternative.
Grocery shopping
This isn't so bad once you get used to it. However there are a few things to watch. Some food may seem like vegetarian food, but on closer inspection they're not and suprisingly there's a few foods that are vegetarian that look like they aren't. Watch out for beef fat, gelatine, and if you're looking for vegan food, lactose . Since I've been a vegetarian I have found that some brands of chocolate biscuits contain beef fat, iced animal biscuits contain gelatine (ironic isn't it?), and some breads and some cream cheeses contain gelatine. Additionally, some wine is made using fish products and salt and vinegar chips contain lactose. There are some types of chips (eg beef flavoured) don't actually contain meat and some brands of noodles for example Trident's chicken flavoured rice noodles don't actually contain chicken.
Meat subsitutes
There's actually quite a few. For a while I thought the only meat subsitute I could have was tofu, thank God it's not, as Kiwis are particularly bad at cooking up tofu. So the have done bit of search and I found the following to be good meat subsitutes; vegetarian "beef" steak with black bean and pepper sauce (this can be found at Asian supermarkets), nut meat, cajun tofu sauages, falafel, plain chick peas, and vegetarian patties (made from hydrolysed vegetable protein). There are few other vegetarian meat subsitutes that you can find in Asian supermarkets, but they're not particulary nice.
BBQs
You can only have meat and beer at a Kiwi BBQ, right? Wrong! There's a quite a few things that work well on the barbie. Mushrooms and tomatoes lightly coated in Tuscan seasoning, onions, tofu sauages, hydrolysed vegetable protein sauages (these are quite nice) and garlic bread. Try making your own garlic bread - get a French stick, crush some garlic and mix it up with a bit of olive oil and spread it on to the French stick. It's so much better than the buttery garlic bread from supermarkets.
So that's me for the week. You know the drill, if you have a question then please email me at nutrition.advice@gmail.com or leave a message here.
Krissi
Many places cater for vegetarians but they do vary on the options available to vegetarians. A bar, for example, isn't a good place to get a decent veggie meal. They tend to only have chips (which you will need to check to see what they are cooked in) and salads, which is just plain boring. I have noticed that Asian restaraunts are excellent at providing non meat eaters with variety. There's a place in good old Wellington called Aunty Mena's and it is completely vegetarian. Even if you don't feel like this type of meal, you can ask the waiter (nicely) to leave out the meat and have the chef cook up a veggie friendly alternative.
Grocery shopping
This isn't so bad once you get used to it. However there are a few things to watch. Some food may seem like vegetarian food, but on closer inspection they're not and suprisingly there's a few foods that are vegetarian that look like they aren't. Watch out for beef fat, gelatine, and if you're looking for vegan food, lactose . Since I've been a vegetarian I have found that some brands of chocolate biscuits contain beef fat, iced animal biscuits contain gelatine (ironic isn't it?), and some breads and some cream cheeses contain gelatine. Additionally, some wine is made using fish products and salt and vinegar chips contain lactose. There are some types of chips (eg beef flavoured) don't actually contain meat and some brands of noodles for example Trident's chicken flavoured rice noodles don't actually contain chicken.
Meat subsitutes
There's actually quite a few. For a while I thought the only meat subsitute I could have was tofu, thank God it's not, as Kiwis are particularly bad at cooking up tofu. So the have done bit of search and I found the following to be good meat subsitutes; vegetarian "beef" steak with black bean and pepper sauce (this can be found at Asian supermarkets), nut meat, cajun tofu sauages, falafel, plain chick peas, and vegetarian patties (made from hydrolysed vegetable protein). There are few other vegetarian meat subsitutes that you can find in Asian supermarkets, but they're not particulary nice.
BBQs
You can only have meat and beer at a Kiwi BBQ, right? Wrong! There's a quite a few things that work well on the barbie. Mushrooms and tomatoes lightly coated in Tuscan seasoning, onions, tofu sauages, hydrolysed vegetable protein sauages (these are quite nice) and garlic bread. Try making your own garlic bread - get a French stick, crush some garlic and mix it up with a bit of olive oil and spread it on to the French stick. It's so much better than the buttery garlic bread from supermarkets.
So that's me for the week. You know the drill, if you have a question then please email me at nutrition.advice@gmail.com or leave a message here.
Krissi
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