Video: When Meat Consumption Becomes Unsustainable

Today a friend posted a link on her page to a film that made me so glad that I am a Vegetarian.

This film isn't an easy watch and contains footage of animals being killed and gutted. However, it is a real eye opener into the secrets of the mass meat-producing industry from the start of the process to the plate.

SAMSARA food sequence from Baraka & Samsara on Vimeo.

It just goes to show what happens when the demand for meat becomes unsustainable. Buying cheap meat and animal products in the supermarket means that the meat you are eating probably comes from a source similar to this, where the animals were badly treated and where their lives from start to end were probably pretty horrific and inhumane.

This is why I believe things like Meat Free Monday and Fish Free Friday are so important. I'm not saying everyone should become Vegan or Vegetarian, but if people reduced their meat and fish intake, so that the demand was more sustainable then perhaps scenes like this would be reduced. It isn't good for your health to eat meat every single day - so why not consider eating either meat alternatives or looking for something else to put on your plate a couple of days a week.

Also, if people cared more about where their meat came from and bought from more independent producers, where animals are ethically treated and have happy lives, then hopefully this would also cause a reduction in the practice of battery farming.

As I said, when I watch films like this, it does make me glad that I don't eat meat. Although I am not an animal activist, part of the reason I don't eat meat is because I can't stomach the thought of animals being treated badly and farmed, killed and packaged just for the convenience of humans.

What do you think about this film? Would it encourage you to change your eating habits?

Review of Takeaway.com

Recently we were invited to review takeaway service Takeaway.com. Takeaway.com is an delivery service which offers over seven thousand small restaurants the opportunity to have an online presence. They act as an intermediate between us as consumers and restaurants who want to offer a delivery service but may not be able to operate a website on the scale of a larger business offering takeaway food. The process of ordering was really simple and easy to follow. After entering our postcode, we were given a choice of restaurants offering the service in our local area. There were nine restaurants in our area offering delivery under the Takeaway.com banner. They also offered a range of food including Italian, American, Greek, Thai, Indian and British food. I suspect that it probably depends on where you live as to how many restaurants are available to order from.

We were eating with the kids, so where as our first choice of takeaway would typically be an Indian, we wanted to go for something that we would all eat, and so needed to choose something a little more child friendly. Other factors that I considered when ordering were how far away the takeaway was from the house (one restaurant was in a town further away), whether there was a minimum order for delivery and how much it was, and also what other reviews of the restaurant were like. Some restaurants had a big minimum order, and others didn't have great reviews. Something else I noted was that some of the restaurants were well set up for delivery (like the kebab and pizza restaurants) whereas others focused more on their in-house sit down trade rather than sending food out for delivery. With this in mind, we decided to go for a restaurant which was used to delivering food. I was a little apprehensive about ordering from a sit-down restaurant as I didn’t know how often they checked their online orders and how well they were set up for keeping delivery food hot, or whether it would take longer for the food to get to us.

We decided to order from “Papa Johns” which is a pizza delivery service close to our house. Ordering online was very simple, we just selected our restaurant, and then chose what we wanted from the online menu. After finalising our choices, we clicked on the order button and made our payment. I then received an email to my email account within a couple of minutes to say that the order had been received and would be delivered within an hour. In the end, our order took forty minutes to be delivered which we thought was extremely reasonable for an online delivery service - and considering it was also a Friday evening, we were impressed.

Being pretty much takeaway virgins, the kids were very excited at the prospect of food actually being delivered ready-to-eat straight to the door. Youngest was bouncing up and down excitedly screaming “pizza pizza pizza” when the takeaway guy arrived and they pretty much snatched the boxes out of his hands and rushed to get them on the table so that they could start devouring the contents.

When it arrived, the food was piping hot, we could feel the heat through the boxes. We ordered three large pizzas, four sides, and a bottle of drink. The order came to just over forty pounds. We were actually really pleasantly surprised as we started eating. The pizza’s tasted really fresh, the dough was very crispy and not too thick, the toppings contained good quality ingredients, and the portions were generous - both the pizza and the sides.

As a family, we have never ordered a takeaway for all of us, although hubby and I have indulged in the occasional Indian on a Saturday night. This experience has encouraged us to take the plunge and order online more often as it is a really good excuse to have a night off from the cooking.

We also liked that ordering from Takeaway.com means that you can order from a small independent business, and opens up more choices for takeaway food. Even though we chose Pizza this time, we are going to be more adventurous next time.

We would definitely recommend ordering from Takeaway.com as it is a good alternative to ordering from the more usual suspects offering an online takeaway delivery service. As Hubby so succinctly put it: “Ordering was simple, delivery was fast, the food was top quality” - you can't say better than that!

Disclosure: We were asked to review the takeaway.com service and our order was complimentary. All opinions are my own, and I was not asked to write this review. 

Goats Cheese, Butternut Squash and Red Pepper Pasta

A quick fix-it lunch for Meat Free Monday today. There is a wonderful array of winter squash in the supermarkets and on the allotments at the moment, and so I decided to take full advantage of this and add yet another autumnal butternut squash recipe to the blog.

I made this delicious Goats Cheese, Butternut Squash and Red Pepper Pasta recently as a quick fix for lunch. I love the colours of food, and as creamy pasta makes quite a bland canvas, I decided to brighten it up with some wonderful oranges and reds to celebrate the season, and also added some basil leaves for even more colour and flavour.

I find that people sometimes get so bogged down in tomato bases for pasta sauce, that they forget there is a whole array of cheese which can be mixed with pasta to provide a creamy sauce with a full bodied flavour. When mixing in my goats cheese to the pasta, I reserved some of the cooked pasta water to help the goats cheese form a creamy sauce - just enough to help the cheese stick to the pasta.

I hope you enjoy this dish, and Happy Meat Free Monday!

Goats Cheese, Butternut Squash and Red Pepper Pasta

Print This Recipe

Ingredients:

500g Pasta 
500g Butternut Squash, cubed
1 Red Pepper, chopped into small pieces
200g Goats Cheese, cut into smallish pieces
Salt & Pepper to taste
Olive Oil
Basil Leaves for decorating

Directions:

• Heat the oven to 200 degrees. Place the Butternut Squash and Pepper into a roasting tray, cat I a little olive oil, and cook for around thirty minutes. 
• Cook the pasta as per the packet instructions, in water with a little oil added to prevent sticking.
• Once cooked, drain the pasta, reserving a little of the hot water.7Mix the Pasta together in a bowl with the goats cheese. Add a little water to help the goats cheese to form a sticky paste.
• Once the squash and pepper have cooked, drain them of their oil, and combine with the pasta.
• Add basil, salt and pepper as desired, and serve immediately. 

Do Chefs Enjoy Cooking for Vegetarians?

This morning I was listening to Chris Evans, advertising the Dine and Disco Auction on Radio Two. He featured Chefs Giorgio Locatelli, Mark Sargeant and Tom Kerridge on his show, who were all talking about the feast of delights they would be cooking for the lucky winners of the auction. As I listened, I heard the Chefs talking lovingly about Lobster, Pheasant, Beef and other delightful dishes containing meat and fish. The dishes all sounded amazing. However, I don't think that I heard a single Vegetarian dish mentioned by the Chefs.

This made me wonder whether Chefs actually enjoy cooking Vegetarian food? Or do they just find it boring without meat or fish to add flavour? Personally, as I'm sure you know, I love Vegetarian cooking, but judging by the amount of uninspired Vegetarian Risotto dishes I find on famous Chefs menu's, and the couple of token Vegetarian meals I find in top Chef's recipe books, I think that many top Chefs probably find it hard to think of inspired Vegetarian meals.

Of course there are many fantastic Vegetarian chefs out there - but they seem to be more specialist, and the exception to the rule. Perhaps it's just that chefs don't learn about vegetarian food in chef/cookery school, or that in the work place there is a huge demand for Meaty dishes and not much for vegetarian fare?

I'm not sure, but listening to the radio this morning, I wasn't inspired to ring and bid for a table to have one of these famous chefs cook for me as their reliance on meat and fish for taste made me wonder what they would end up cooking a lowly vegetarian.......


What do you think? Do chefs enjoy cooking for Vegetarians? I would really hope that the answer is yes! All answers on a postcard (or in a comment!)

Higgidy Cookbook and Event

I am rather partial to a pie, and a Pie from Higidy especially, so I was very excited when I was invited to attend an event with the founder of Higgidy, Camilla Stephens.

Her story is a rather unique one. A self confessed "non school type" she found her passion in life when she left school, which gives hope to all of us parents with children who may not be the academic type. After studying a Diploma at Leiths Cooking School, and a spell preparing food for the Orient Express, Camilla later moved on to a position as Deputy Cookery Editor at Good Housekeeping Magazine. In a bid to learn more about marketing and food branding, she decided to move on to work as a Barista, and sourced food for the Boston Tea Company, which later became Starbucks. However, she always had a dream to set up on her own and run her own food company, and her entrepreneurship existed in a couple of other food forms before she finally found her niche in the market.

In a bid to change the perception of the traditional Pie, often seen as in her words, quite "chip-shop" "pubby" and "blokey", Camilla decided to put all of her eggs in one basket, and invest in creating a new kind of pie. Starting off selling in local cafes and at farmers markets, Camilla, along with her husband then started supplying to the EAT chain. Eventually making the leap from the kitchen table, Higgidy launched their first pie in the supermarket and started supplying to Sainsburys, Waitrose, Co-Op and Booths in 2007. However, even though she was now supplying to major retailers, Camilla knew that she wanted the Higgidy brand to represent homemade values and a company with real people behind itm rather than a faceless brand. She also wanted the brand to have a more feminine feel to appeal to the people who typically do the family shopping - women!

With an open top and a window in the box, Higgidy is paving the way to allow consumers to choose pies which appeal more to the female consumer, with more interesting fillings, flavours and textures than just a shortcrust pastry base and lid. 

Nowadays, with a fourteen million turnover, Higgidy produces more than two hundred, thousand pies a year - involving five miles of pastry. In a bid to retain their homemade feel, all Higgidy pies are decorated and finished by hand with a range of nuts and seeds. The fillings are also produced in small batches compared to other pie-makers, to ensure that it keeps them from tasting and appearing factory-processed. 

I really like Higgidy as they do such fantastic Vegetarian Options. I also like how every one is hand finished and typically contains a crunchy topping such as nuts, or seeds for added 'crunch' At the event we were lucky enough to sample some delicious Higgidy offerings. Whilst there was the new pies containing game and turkey for the meat eaters, the Vegetarians hadn't been forgotten, and we were able to sample the Sweet Potato and Feta Pies with Pumpkin Seeds, and the Little Mushroom and Leaf Spinach Pies which were divine and would be perfect for Vegetarians. Higgidy are a really great company and they believe in providing quality over quantity - which is evident in their finished products. 

Recently, Higgidy have bought out a new cookbook. Camilla wanted to create a cookbook which was friendly, with a range of recipes, some of which are worth taking the time over, and others which are quick and easy to make. The recipes use lots of different types of pastry and lids. There is also the option to use pre-made pastry if you are short of time. The new Higgidy cookbook contains many fantastic recipes - including lots of Vegetarian pies, and lots more which could be made vegetarian using meat substitutes. I always love a cookbook which remembers the Vegetarians, and there are plenty of offerings including wintry and summery pizza pie, spicy tomato and lentil layer pie, pea and veggie parmesan parcels and beetroot and feta parcels. There are also some delicious sweet pies featured which would make the perfect finish to any meal, or a fab treat for coffee with friends. As a proficient cook, but a useless baker, I will always prefer making a pie over something like a cake, and so this is literally the perfect book for me to cook from. I am sure that it would make a fantastic addition to the kitchen, as it contains so many interesting recipes to challenge the traditional perception of the humble pie. I am also sure that it would be much appreciated as a Christmas gift!.

The Higgidy cookbook retails at an rrp of £16.99, although it is available cheaper from major retailers. 

I really enjoyed the event and meeting Camilla - thanks to Higgidy for inviting me, and do go out and get the book - it really is worth a look!

Disclosure: I attended and event and received a complimentary copy of the Higgidy book to review. 

All opinions are my own.