So Here I Go: Opinions & Advice

Hugh Hefner

For a few months now I've tossed around the idea of going vegetarian. then I realised that with the up coming mid-term break it would be a great time to attack this.

So what I plan to do is, next Saturday, begin a 1 month trial of vegetarianism. After this month I'm gonna look back at what happened, how I fared, how I felt, if I changed, etc. and see then if I want to continue on.


Let me say two thing:...

1. I'm not doing this out of any humanitarian reasons, though I've never been completely comfortable with the killing, and just want to tryout a different diet to see if it's advantageous and to enlighten myself. Not participating in animal death is only a bonus.
2. I've never been that taken with meat anyway, so this shouldn't be too much of an ordeal.

In preparation I'm gonna go shopping with my dad next weekend and stock up on straight-to-wok noodles (yum); carrots (I like 'em raw); eggs, for pancake batter; bananas, peaches (canned), pears (canned), strawberries and grapes (an assortment of my favourite fruits).
Over the next few days I'm gonna go through whatever's in the kitchen and look through the ingredients to see it there's anything I should exclude. Does anyone have any advice on what ingredients I should watch out for?
I might keep a log of my progress too. Maybe.
I just finished up a 10 week cooking course so hopefully that'll help.

So does anyone have any opinions on my plans? Am I doing anything obviously wrong? Is there something obvious I'm overlooking? Any advice on problems I might encounter? Is 1 month enough time to get to grips with vegetarianism? Should I give it longer. That wouldn't be a problem.

One more thing: What's the best health food store in the Drumcondra/City Centre area? I want to check one out. Maybe get inspired.


Danke schoen,
H.H.

bonzo82

Hi Hugh, going veggie shouldn't be too hard for you if you're not that into meat in the first place. The only things you need to look out for on labelling would really be gelatin...as far as I know anyway! It's quite fun really, you'll find yourself getting acquainted with different foods that you may not have normally bothered with. As for Health Food stores, there's a nice little one in GPO arcade, none in Drumcondra that I know of, there's a big Holland and Barrett one on Grafton St, and a little one in the Market Arcade.

Good luck with it, and enjoy!

FX Meister

When I made the switch years ago I did it gradually. I started cooking a lot of vege dishes as well as usual meat dishes. Then when I made the complete switch it wasn't so hard and I had a good foundation of dishes to cook.

Hugh Hefner

bonzo82 wrote:

As for Health Food stores, there's a nice little one in GPO arcade, none in Drumcondra that I know of, there's a big Holland and Barrett one on Grafton St, and a little one in the Market Arcade.

Holland and Barrett, eh? I'll definately be checking that out soon. Thanks.

FX Meister wrote:

I started cooking a lot of vege dishes as well as usual meat dishes. Then when I made the complete switch it wasn't so hard and I had a good foundation of dishes to cook.

Yeah, I was considering doing a thing where I make primarily vegetarian snacks/meals and add meat (e.g noodles with tuna), then phase out the meat. I think what I'm gonna do though is go cold turkey (bad pun, I know) for the trial period and if I had trouble with that, but want to continue, take on a gradually strategy. Cool.

I'm likin' all this. Its getting me thinking.


Anyone else?

bonzo82

Oh yeah, rennet is another ingredient to watch out for as you phase yourself into veg-ism, it's in some cheeses, and it's basically an enzyme obtained from the lining of a calf's stomach. Ick. Plenty of cheeses don't use it though, they'll usually have a V or "suitable for vegetarians" on the pack somewhere.

I believe "Cold Tofu" is the accepted term...ahem...cough....brutal...sorry!

Peanut

Hugh Hefner wrote:

...
Over the next few days I'm gonna go through whatever's in the kitchen and look through the ingredients to see it there's anything I should exclude. Does anyone have any advice on what ingredients I should watch out for?

How much free time do you have??

lol I feel a bit awkward sometimes going into a supermarket and start looking at the ingredients on stuff, you know you get people who will go 'oh just eat the bloody thing', however I can't help my curiosity. I've little to no interest in the nutrition information though, I feel very strongly that a lot of people are being manipulated with all the fad low-carb, low-fat, low-life bullsh*t that goes on.

....haaaaaaaving said that.. bonzo is right about the gelatin, however just plain old animal fat also puts in an appearance every now & then in certain items (used to be in some biscuits but that's virtually gone now. Also a local-ish bakery use animal fat shortening in some of their bread).

If you want to be really picky, some milk derivatives like whey and lactose may potentially be sourced from milk treated with animal rennet, however as far as I know this is usually not the case, and the greater bulk of rennet usage now is from microbial sources. e.g. in Marks & Spencers for example, most of their cheese is vegetarian. Certainly most English & Irish cheese is, almost always cheddar, maybe not all of the farmhouse cheeses, but a lot of them like e.g. Gubeen, Durrus, Carrigaline. Other veg cheese - Port Salut, Applewood, BabyBel, Dubliner, Mitchelstown. Probably anything mass produced.

There are also the odd few E numbers that are sourced from various nefarious origins, however I think my head would explode if I had to track & trace each culprit :rolleyes: They're not too common though, interesting example is the red dye in pilau rice is sometimes cochineal. Mmmm.
Ok I'll stop before I put everyone off their local Indian :rolleyes:

One other thing that's not directly related to vegetarianism, but is worth being aware of all the same, is hydrogenated vegetable oil. This is vegetable oil processed by bubbling hydrogen through it under pressure, in order to change the structure of the fats so that they handle more like saturated fats at room temperature, e.g. made into a solid block. However this also screws up the properties of the oil, and is more than likely not the best thing at all to be eating. However if it's just added in small quantities,e.g. as a carrier for flavouring, then it's probably not too bad. You can gauge this by looking at the position on the ingredient list - near the top = bad, towards the end = less of it = good.

Oh yeah good luck with the plan... tbh wouldn't worry about the technicalities too much, just go try something that is (hopefully!) enjoyable!

Hugh Hefner

Peanut wrote:

How much free time do you have??

A lot.

Thanks for the other information. I'm not crazy about the whole low-carb/low-fat/low-taste thing either, as long as my food is relatively good.

Tar.Aldarion

Hugh Hefner wrote:

A lot.

Good! :P

http://www.ivu.org/faq/
sites like this will offer you a lot of good reading.


this is good, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegetarian

there is a lot of reccommended reading at the bottom heh.
G'luck

DSLC

Health shops do tend to have a lot of vegan stuff, so I'll list a few more.

Health food shops (..some of these are probably too far away for you):

• Down to earth, George's Street - good, but quite expensive
• I think the one in the GPO Arcade that bonzo82 mentioned is Nourish
• Other Nourish shops: one on Wicklow Street (..one of the streets in between George's Street and the bottom of Grafton Street anyway)
• Liston's on Camden Street

Another suggestion would be to go to a good vegetarian restaurant, such as Cornucopia on Wicklow Street. It might reveal to you how good vegetarian/vegan food can be.

Doctor Benway

DSLC wrote:

Another suggestion would be to go to a good vegetarian restaurant, such as Cornucopia on Wicklow Street. It might reveal to you how good vegetarian/vegan food can be.

Cornucopia's my favourite one (but only because I have such a teenage crush on the women who work in there), but there are a few others. Also, Cornucopia's probably not the most comfortable place in the world, especially if you're going out for a meal in the evening.

Some other good ones are Juice on George's Street, and the two Govinda's on Middle Abbey Street and Aungier Street. In fact, if you like Indian food you'll be fine, as most Indian places have a decent selection of vegetarian dishes (the Paneer cheese in Jaipur is fantastic).

If you look around, the selection of vegetarian dishes in 'normal' restaurants is improving a lot as well. I was in Darwin's up on Aungier Street at the weekend, and that has a very good vegetarian menu, with three or four choices on each course (rather than the usual one).

Al Katraz

bonzo82 wrote:

Oh yeah, rennet is another ingredient to watch out for as you phase yourself into veg-ism, it's in some cheeses, and it's basically an enzyme obtained from the lining of a calf's stomach. Ick. Plenty of cheeses don't use it though, they'll usually have a V or "suitable for vegetarians" on the pack somewhere.

I believe "Cold Tofu" is the accepted term...ahem...cough....brutal...sorry!

Dunnes have cheese which they lavel 'suitable for vegetarians' but the ingredients list rennet. There is vegetarian rennet in some cheeses but it's probably GM, which doesn't really bother me.

Generally if a pack says rennet and leaves out the word vegetarian before it, it's not vegetarian.

Hugh Hefner

O RLY? I would write to them if I were you. Or bring it to the attention of some sort of watchdog. I'd say they're using veg. rennet but if they're not then that's pretty serious.

Peanut

Doctor Benway wrote:

Cornucopia's my favourite one (but only because I have such a teenage crush on the women who work in there), but there are a few others. Also, Cornucopia's probably not the most comfortable place in the world, especially if you're going out for a meal in the evening.

I just noticed today that they have a planning permission notice up for conversion of the sheepskin shop (lol ) next door into use as a restaurant (also the first floor), so maybe they will make one big place out of it. They would certainly get enough customers.