THE RELUCTANT VEGETARIAN

28 May , 2016 Family Eating

Kate Posener’s 20-year-old meat-loving son came home from uni last summer and announced that he was now a vegan

Once I recovered from the initial shock I told my son that I would not be cooking specific things for him but that I would be happy to tweak existing family meals where possible! No way was I going to give up our family favourite weekend treats of melt-in-the-mouth slow-cooked shoulder of lamb and steaks cooked perfectly rare, or the ease of our mid-week suppers of spaghetti bolognese and sweet and sour meatballs.

Fast forward 12 months and my husband has now given up red meat and my youngest son is verging on being a pescatarian. As a result I have had to give up all red meat at home, but the amazing thing is that it has not been difficult. From vegan butternut chili (BBC Good Food) to cauliflower tikka masala (Jamie Oliver), each week brings new vegan and vegetarian delights. Far from tweaking, I am actually relishing finding delicious and colourful new recipes that we can ALL eat. As a family we are all genuinely embracing eating the rainbow.

I even find myself reaching for the vegan option in Pret a Manger; my current favourite is the red and green superfood sandwich and the gluten and dairy free Bircher muesli. And interestingly, as I learned from India Knight in the Sunday Times last weekend, Pret is about to launch its first vegetarian-only outlet in central London.

Being vegan or vegetarian is so accessible and easy these days, even non-vegans and vegetarians are being seduced. Gail’s offers several daily vegan options; my local pub The Red Lion and Sun in Highgate always has at least two vegan choices on the menu; Helmsley and Helmsley are running one of the restaurants in Selfridges and currently taking over from Nigella in the affections of the nation with their new series on Channel Four. Deliciously Ella’s The Mae Deli in Marylebone and CookDaily at Boxpark in Shoreditch are just as popular with vegans and vegetarians as with red meat lovers like me.

I can’t say that I don’t occasionally cave in and order a rib-eye (as my husband looks on drooling, his dreams no longer of the conquests of his youth but of a perfectly rare-cooked steak!) or that as a family we don’t sometimes crave the erstwhile family roasts, but what we all agree on is that the vegan/vegetarian way is the more satisfactory one, both ethically and for our physical health. I read with horror recently of what our daily glass of milk actually contains and I feel sure that none of us would choose it over the soy/almond/coconut option if we all knew the ugly truth. I am afraid that as much as I usually love the musings of the aforementioned India Knight, I cannot agree with her latest dismissal of clean eating as ‘a food fad that is not only annoying but dangerous’. From the tone of her article it sounds like she would have us reaching for a sandwich comprising the white sliced Sunblest of our childhood and a slice of processed meat or cheese. Vegetarianism and veganism may not be the only way but they are the clean way (and possibly the lean way, too!).