By special request (Jenna) we wanted to share something about what we’ve been eating whilst we’ve been away.
As some of you will be aware, since our visit to India last November/December, we have eaten meat only a few times (and not at all since we came away). This is not for any noble reasons, although interestingly since we made this change we have started to think more about how animals are treated, but simply because I spent five weeks in Rishikesh where meat is not an option. enjoyed my food hugely, as did Paul when he joined me. After that, we looked at each other and said “why would we go back to eating meat when eating a vegetarian diet tastes so good?” We didn’t have an answer, so here we are!
So, how do you learn about a new way of eating when the only cooking facility is a three burner gas hob, a frying pan, two saucepans, a mixing bowl and a jug? The internet helps, when we have it. We’ve found it really useful to be able to look up vegetarian versions of our favourite meals – fajitas, tagine, paella – to name a few. And they have been delicious.
‘Blissful Basil’ (feel free to google it) gave us the recipe for a beautiful mushroom paella and BBC Good Food a lovely tagine. However a lot of the time we just play around with stuff – trying different vegetables on different days for variety; adding vegetables that will give us the ‘bite’ that we miss from meat; including beans, chickpeas and lentils when we can and playing with alternatives to rice and pasta, like quinoa and couscous.
Some of our experiments have worked better than others but we haven’t had anything that we weren’t prepared to eat yet. We’ve also really enjoyed preparing the food together; sitting across the table from each other, each with a chopping board and knife, chatting about any old nonsense while we prepare all of the vegetables before one of us (usually Paul) puts it all together. It’s a lovely way of ‘being’ and one we will try and keep hold of when we get back home.
Breakfast has sometimes been cereals, particularly when we want to make an early start to the next town. We’ve also had the odd cooked breakfast with eggs, avocado, mushrooms and tomatoes, but rarely. Most of the time we’ve enjoyed an old fashioned bowl of porridge, usually made with an alternative milk (strangely enough oat is our preferred option), and whatever fruit has looked good in the shops, often bananas and oranges, sometimes apples, raspberries, strawberries and pomegranate and adding nuts and seeds. Served with lashings of honey (Paul) or maple syrup (Sam) we love it – even as the weather has heated up, which really surprised me.
We find lunch the trickiest meal to adapt, especially as bread, cheese, tomatoes and sometimes olives, are such a staple in France, Spain and Portugal. We do love this but we know it’s not good to have it every day. So that’s a work in progress. The other challenge for us has been eating out. We haven’t eaten out much, as we are trying to keep the costs down, but on the very few occasions we have we’ve really struggled to find a decent choice of vegetarian food. Usually we end up with fries, pizza, salad and/or omelette. We’ve only ever seen one vegetarian restaurant (in Cordoba I think) and in Spain in particular it was very difficult to get away from cold meats (which we used to love) as they seem to fill one aisle of most supermarkets.
My experience at Gravito was of ‘proper’ vegetarian food, which was all delicious. It’s certainly given me an appetite to get some new cookbooks when I get home to see if I can recreate some of the foods I enjoyed there. It’ll come but it all takes time. If you have any recommendations for great vegetarian cookbooks we’d love to hear from you and if you want to try any of our own creations just shout and we’ll send you the recipe.
Bon Appetit
Sam and Paul xx
Finding the Elephant 