Vegetarian week

Grilled chili mushrooms with squash, beans and potatoes

It’s Vegetarian Week again! If you’ve been meaning to help the environment out a bit more, why not Pledge to Try Veg? Every person who signs the pledge means that a dollar will be donated to the Great Barrier Reef Foundation to help protect it from climate change.

I’m giving it a go this week, with the “eat vegetarian for the week” option. Other choices include trying a vegetarian meal (if you don’t normally do that) or having a vegetarian meal with a non-vegetarian friend (if you’re already meat-free).

We’ve talked before about the environmental destruction caused by cattle and sheep farming . And unless you’re getting your meat source from small, sustainable farms, there’s a good chance the animals aren’t being treated humanely.

The thing that’s made going part-time vego easier for me has been getting a few really good vegetarian cook books. Having new and exciting recipes to try is fun and much more satisfying than cooking your usual “meat & 3 veg” meals but leaving out the meat.

This weekend I picked up a copy of How To Cook Everything Vegetarian by Mark Bittman. Bittman is a food writer for the New York Times, and believes that although the majority of people probably won’t become fully vegetarian, the days of “all meat, all the time” are over. So he’s come up with simple, great recipes that anyone can use to get the hang of vegetarian cooking.

Overall, the book is most similar to Stephanie Alexander’s encyclopedic The Cook’s Companion, sorted by ingredient with lots of suggestions for variations. The recipes I want to try are the Tuscan-style white beans, the corn fritters, and maybe the grilled watermelon when the weather’s a bit warmer here.

If you’re not in the market for a new cookbook, I can thoroughly recommend Taste.com.au’s vegetarian recipes. Over 66 pages of stuff to try, you’re bound to find something you like!