Foody post
ok, a bit of a more cheery post than that one below (although I suppose it is helpful to write things down, I hate being down constantly on the blog).
I meant to blog my decision to become vegetarian when I first decided about 6 weeks or so ago but I never got round to it. So for those that don’t know: ‘My name is Kirsty and I now no longer eat meat!’ 
I’ve often thought about being veggie again (I was veggie at school) but had always talked myself out of it on the ethical side as I never felt it would make as much of a difference to animal welfare as buying good quality meat would. It wasn’t as if I never liked the taste of meat, I did, so i kept on.
When james went to the doctors last month and was told he had high blood pressure it made me think about our diet (I constantly think we eat badly!!) and I knew we had to do something. I googled (as I do about anything!!) and saw that vegetarians tend to have lower blood pressure and asked James if he thought it was a good idea, he agreed and my decision was made. James lasted about half a day and had chicken sandwich or something to which I said: ‘ that’s not very vegetarian is it?’ and he replied ‘but I’m allowed fish and chicken aren’t I? Otherwise I’d be vegan’ Hmm *rolls whole head*. He hasn’t done very well since (why on earth did he say he’d do it in the first place - was it one of those Homer Simpson moments where he was just agreeing while thinking about donuts??) but I’ve decided I’ll stick to it and since I cook all our main meals will be veggie so I suppose he’ll benefit a bit.
Have to say I’ve really enjoyed it so far. Such a far cry from being at school and my mum feeding me chips and a veggie burger all the time. No wonder I didn’t stick to it. We’re still trying to figure out meals we’ll all enjoy. M is very fussy with food and tbh it’s taken ages to get him to eat what he does like now, but mostly his faves are spag bol (made a nice one the other day with mushrooms instead of mince which we all loved), pizza, boiled eggs and pasta and tom sauce so don’t think should be too bad and certainly no worse than normal in trying to get him to try other things.
Some of the sites I’ve found really helpful are Lucy’s Vegan Family House and also Vegan Dad. Lucy’s site has been such an eye opener for me and tbh I didn’t realise I had such strong preconceptions of how ‘weird’ and ‘extreme’ a vegan diet was until I started reading about it. But I started looking at the recipes and thinking how fab they all looked and sounded and realised how wrong I was. I actually think I’d like to aspire to being as animal free in my own diet now (again for both health and ethical resons), but am taking it all a step at a time. I don’t really eat cheese that much anyway, in fact normally only on pizza and I’ve even given that up (I have sesame seeds on instead of cheese now if I do make it for myself) so it’s really only milk, yoghurts and eggs. Eggs will probably be the only sticking point, but we’ll see. Oh actually - chocolate!! That’s the hard bit. I’m trying to wean myself away from milk chocolate and develop a taste for plain which I’ve always hated so far. It’s working a bit Anyway, I’m not in any real rush to change.
I guess one of the best things about it all is that i’m trying so many new things. I’m a really fussy person when it comes to food, (M certainly takes after me!!) that I can sit in a rut for ages but this has made me have to try new things and it’s been great. Not to mention that I’ve managed to lose half a stone since starting it (I was doing WW too before my hol - not since coming back but in the weeks on hol and since coming back have lost another 2 lb). Now if I can just lose the rest I’ll be happy 
Any veggie recipes, especially ones that kids seem to love will be really appreciated!
One of the other things we’re going to be starting doing is cutting out Aspartame and sweetners in the kids diets. I was always dithering about what way to go on it as I never saw any Hyperactive effects on the kids. One of the deciding factors of my starting to *not* worry about it was that M was having teeth problems and as he won’t drink just water we figured the sugar free drinks would be the best way to go.
However, lately one thing that has been getting me a little concerned is M’s constant worrying and anxiety in situations. I do really feel he’s not getting better with it as time goes by (if anything he’s worse) so I was looking into it and wondering if his diet could make it better. Seems Aspartame may cause anxiety so I’m figuring it’s got to be worth a go to see if it will make any difference to him. Will be starting it tomorrow (as kids had one last day of crap at my mums shop so I could brief her on it) and I’m going to try and keep a food diary. Will see how it goes, anything so I don’t blame myself for it (I keep blaming the moving about we’ve done although I’m sure it’s not the only reason). If anyone has any ideas on the anxiety then I’d be happy to hear that too
you can get reasonably nice soya based dairy free ‘milk’ chocolate. We get it for E sometimes. And I think the sugar vs sweetener thing is interesting, personally I’ll always choose sugar and we try and avoid artificial sweeteners. Good on you for giving it a a go
Comment by Em — May 10, 2008 @ 10:11 pm
Wow! That’s fantastic Kirsty - good luck with it all. Sainsbury do Dairy Free chocolate - it’s not that great but it helped me to ditch milk chocolate in the end. And with eggs - at least you can get the best ones available in ethical terms I guess? Sounds like it’s going really well. If I think of any helpful recipes or other ideas I’ll e-mail you.
Comment by Ali — May 10, 2008 @ 10:21 pm
Lidl do a chocolate soy milk that my kids reckon is great. And the plain soy milk is fine too - I’d always imagined soy milk would taste really weird, I have no idea why, but it’s fine - I could easily have it on cereal etc. It’s about the same nutritionally as semi-skimmed.
We didn’t like quorn mince much, going to try soya mince. Quorn chicken pieces are ok - you can cut them up smaller and they go a long way.
This is very interesting to me, as we’re going through it here too, with Gwenny going veggie and the rest of us trying to eat less meat too - the 2008 blogcraze?
Comment by Alison — May 10, 2008 @ 10:42 pm
Great post (love James and his chicken sandwich!), good for you. Really hope you see a difference with the aspartame thing too.
Comment by Sarah — May 11, 2008 @ 6:25 am
I’ll have a look for that chocolate then thanks!
Comment by Administrator — May 11, 2008 @ 10:16 am
just found your comment Alison. I’ll have a look in Lidl for that, I don’t like choc milk, but maybe the kids and James will. Have tried soya before (when James tried to give up dairy) and found it ok, I liked oat milk on cereal.
I don’t really like soya mince that much, which is a shame as the thing I’ll miss most with meat is mince dishes. My absolute fave. It gives me a bit of indigestion too which isn’t good, same with quorn mince.
Is Gwenny still happy with it all? Was wondering how she was getting on
Comment by Administrator — May 11, 2008 @ 11:28 am
Dear Kirsty,
You wrote:
“One of the other things we’re going to be starting doing is cutting out Aspartame and sweetners in the kids diets…”
Aspartame definitely causes anxiety. No. 3 on the list the FDA was forced to reveal in the early 90’s is change in mood quality or level.
You will definitely see a change in “M” Try to avoid processed food with MSG, also an “excitotoxin.” Very hard to do, as it seems to permeate everything.
Check out this private study on aspartame.. the pictures are graphic. (I wrote the intro)
http://myaspartameexperiment.com
This is a good,very recent article by the anti-aspartame movement
http://www.dldewey.com/aspar508.htm
Did y’all know Ajinomoto, the manufacturers of aspartame are suing Asda for taking it out of their products?
Best,
Carolg
If anyone has any questions about aspartame you may write to me at carolguilford@sbcglobal.net
Comment by Carolg — May 11, 2008 @ 2:49 pm
Please don’t use aspartame.
http://myaspartameexperiment.com
Comment by June Ray — May 11, 2008 @ 4:13 pm
coo, you seem to have raised some external interest there!
Good to hear you’re coming back over to the right side
only wish I could get rest of my family to eat more veggie stuff! Although tbh, there’s not a whole lot of meat going on around here, just a little ham for the kids and mainly bacon for Tim.
Comment by jax — May 11, 2008 @ 7:32 pm
How on earth did I not know about aspartame and anxiety??? I’d made the connection with Aprilia being hyper with it years ago but I’ve let it slip a bit recently as it doesn’t make her hyper any more but she’s been really down in the dumps recently, guess that could be it then…..
Comment by Anni — May 11, 2008 @ 8:07 pm
We’re talking about eating less meat here too, but struggling to think about what to feed the children too.
As far as eggs go, I guess they are less of an issue than meat or milk. We eat lots of eggs from our own hens, but even though you don’t have your own, if you get good free range ones they’re quite good from an animal rights pov and also a global footprint pov.
I keep having to not think about not eating dairy - our diet would be so difficult without it.
Comment by Jan — May 11, 2008 @ 9:49 pm
Gwenny’s fine with it. We had a week of no meat at all, and we’re managing more meat-free meals. She eats fish - we decided they have happy lives swimming about and are likely to get eaten anyway - which makes things easier (although Violet and C don’t eat fish!).
We go through a fair amount of milk here, but if people were bothered I would swap to non-dairy milk. Eggs are free-range, and we can live with that. Some cheese, but not loads. Lots of yogurts!
Risotto is popular here, if your kids will eat rice. Lots of stir fries too - smoked tofu is going down very well as a meat alternative, and Violet surprised herself by really liking beansprouts
Comment by Alison — May 11, 2008 @ 10:10 pm
And, well, if all that was on offer was water, I expect he’d start drinking it
After a long period of only milk and water, we now also have a carton of value fruit juice a day - easy fruit & veg portion!
Comment by Alison — May 11, 2008 @ 10:13 pm
We avoid aspartame here because it triggers aggression in Dino, I’m wondering about his anxiety too now…
Comment by Sarah, Dino and Mimi — May 11, 2008 @ 10:29 pm
I have nothing to add here
But good luck with it,sounds like it’s working well for you.
Comment by Nic — May 12, 2008 @ 12:00 am
Way to go kirsty! Really pleased for you.
I’m the only veggie here. Would be vegan but I like eggs and honey and the occasional bit of fish- growing up with a fisherman dad has made it impossible for my taste buds to stop craving it LOL!
We’ve never allowed aspartame as it’s linked to so many negative things, for me it’s the dementia one that’s most worrying. You have to be careful checking labels of you buy ready sauces etc as they bung it in everywhere!
Good luck.
I love Lucy’s site also!
Comment by Roslyn — May 12, 2008 @ 8:27 am
I laughed about James–I think there is alot of confussion out there about what vegetarianism is! It’s not just him!
This link is to some of the toxcity reports for aspartame http://www.holisticmed.com/aspartame/ There are also lots of links to it causing migranes and headaches. 15 years ago I suffered from them–they stopped a month after I stopped drinking diet colas. Haven’t had one since.
We don’t give our two any artifical sweetners-sugar is fne in moderation. Just remember with the fruit juice-the sugar in that is just as harmful for their teeth as soda.
As Alison said–if they only have water to drink-they will probably drink it! I know some people flavour their water-or try sparkling water if he likes the ‘fizz’.
Good luck with going Vege–we eat meat-but it isn’t a necessary item and can go a week or so without having any. Though I know we couldn’t go vegan! I like eggs and cheese far too much!
Comment by Elizabeth — May 15, 2008 @ 9:29 am
We avoid sweeteners. Would prefer Clo to eat sugar over sweeteners any day. Our problem is salt intake. It’s hidden in so much and she does seem to seek it out in the form of crisps (I have spotted her licking the inside of a crisp packet - eugh!).
I would eat less meat (more for financial reasons - I only buy organic (preferably organic and local) - it’s sooooo expensive) but the veggie food I love has lots of pulses which M and C won’t eat. And as I’m not the chef . . .
And M pulls the diabetes card on me (he apparently needs meat!) which I don’t have the strength to battle with.
Comment by Michelle — May 17, 2008 @ 10:01 am