Veggie Week

Vegetarian week:

This is the first of my week long challenges. Although vegetarianism is becoming more common, and for many this challenge is the norm; giving up meat is still a big step for a lot of people. I have been cutting back my meat intake for a while now, especially of beef, so becoming vegetarian doesn't seem as big of a leap for me as it once was. This week I wanted to look especially at the quality of  meat alternatives and the difference in cost per meal.

Monday: Mushroom Risotto

Monday morning started in a pretty boring manner; a bowl of cereal, not changing my routine at all.

For lunch I did struggle more than expected. Where I would normally have a quick but uninspiring sandwich, most options I would usually go for were not vegetarian. Instead I went for jacket potato with baked beans and cheese. This cost about 60p while a ham and cheese sandwich would cost about 63p.

For the first dinner of the week I made a mushroom risotto with peppers and onion, served with garlic bread. While I would normally use chicken, this was a easy meal to keep vegetarian. The meal cost about £1.85 per portion. If chicken was added it would become the second most expensive item of this meal (behind the garlic bread). Therefore, keeping this meal vegetarian saved about 88p.

Monday's total savings: 91p.

Tuesday: Vegetarian Chilli Con Carne

Tuesday I was on an early morning shift, so again started with a quick bowl of cereal, however my 'lunch' was more imaginative. Guacamole, mushrooms, potatoes, tomatoes, beans and a poached egg. With granola, yogurt and blueberries on the side. This cost about £2.50. Normally for a big breakfast I wouldn't have the guacamole but would have had a couple of sausages. This therefore saved me about 45p.

My vegetarian chilli was similar, it had a more tomato flavour to it and required more seasoning. I usually use turkey mince rather than beef, both of which are more expensive than Quorn mince. However because I added two chillies in rather than one, my vegetarian alternative was very slightly more expensive, £1.41 compared to £1.39. Personally, I am not a fan of the texture of Quorn mince, so if remaking this dish I would use alternatives such as chickpeas. This would make the dish much cheaper, 90p per portion.

Tuesday's total savings: 43p.

Wednesday: Quorn Sausages

Lunch was today's biggest struggle; eating at work meant that there were far fewer vegetarian options. However, what I did end up eating was nice- a roasted vegetable, sun blushed tomato and couscous salad. As 'food to go' from a supermarket it was always going to be more expensive than if I made something from scratch. However the cost was in line with the non vegetarian options so didn't save or cost me any money.

Tonight's meal lacked imagination as I wanted to try a variety of scenarios. By that I mean that we can't always have a perfectly planned dinner that takes an hour to prepare. Therefore, I thought it was important to experience a quick and simple vegetarian meal.

There are some really nice meat free alternatives, I find a good vegetarian burger is sometimes nicer than a beef burger. There are also vegetarian alternatives which are exactly the same, I would highly recommend the Quorn scotch eggs! The Quorn sausage alternatives are okay, nice in themselves, but they don't taste like regular sausages. I think if you go in expecting them to be the same, you would be disappointed. It did surprised me that Quorn sausages are cheaper than regular sausages, 22p each compared to 42p, therefore saving me 60p for the meal.

This was a hassle free meal to make, and although not as good as the well planned meals, I did still enjoy it. It would definitely be worth keeping options like these available in the freezer as a standby option.

Wednesday's total savings: 60p.

Thursday: Sweet Potato Curry

For lunch today I tried a Lentil Cottage Pie ready meal. This was very good, with a sweet potato and carrot mash topping. It was also the same price as the non vegetarian options from that brand, so another added bonus.

For dinner I cooked a vegetable curry. My favourite thing about vegetarian curries is that you can pretty much add anything you have. This included chick peas, cauliflower, onions, chillies, peppers and sweet potato. I tried something new this time; coating the sweet potato in flower and frying them. This was more time consuming, but very good. It cost about 88p per serving and isn't a meal that I am substituting any meat. If I was going to use chicken it would potentially be to replace the sweet potato and chick peas. This would increase the cost to 98p per portion, however I believe it wouldn't have made for as nice of a meal.

Thursday's total savings: 10p.

Friday: Halloumi Burger

For lunch I had a wheatberry, beetroot and goat's cheese salad. It was something that I wouldn't have chosen if it wasn't for being vegetarian and I am glad that I did. Trying vegetarian meals forces you to exploring new food and different pairings as different sources of protein. I enjoy doing this, and despite not making the salad for myself, it was still nice to try. 

Friday night I went out for dinner. The restaurant I went to had a great selection of vegetarian food, in fact it had a whole separate menu for vegan options! I had the halloumi burger, which was lovely, and cheaper than beef and chicken burgers. They also offered a Beyond cheese burger which would have been 90p more than the average beef or chicken burger.

Although the thought of a chicken burger was rather tempting, I have found that the quality of vegetarian food has increased massively in recent years, and I do hope this trend continues. Choosing the vegetarian option saved me £2.09 that night.

Friday's total savings: £2.09.

Saturday: Cheese night

I believe that to make vegetarian sandwiches you have to use more interesting ingredients. So for lunch I had an tomato, mozzarella and avocado sandwich. This cost about £1.25, and although much nicer than a ham and cheese sandwich, it was double the price.

Out again on Saturday, this time going to a cheese and wine night. Thankfully I was not trying vegan this week! Cheese night however, was more of a struggle than I had originally thought. Although there is a lot of lovely vegetarian cheese, more were excluded than I had anticipated. Some popular cheese board favourites like manchego and epoisses are not veggie, as well as some bries and blues. Sadly, picking vegetarian cheese won't be saving you any money either.

What was harder, however, was the tapas to go with it. No pate, no prawns, no hams, instead I had sundried tomatoes, stuffed peppers and olives. Although the hams were very tempting, these vegetarian options were also very nice and saved me about 8p. However, given that I was sharing these, the saving doesn't make a noticeable difference at all.

Saturday's total savings: -54p.

Sunday: Kebabs

For breakfast I had muffins with poached eggs on a bed of spinach. When doing poached eggs I normally have either spinach or smoked salmon. Smoked salmon would cost around 88p per portion compared to the spinach which was 18p per portion. Given that I would have used spinach outside of a vegetarian week, I did not feel that I was sacrificing on this brunch.

For dinner I had vegetarian kebabs, served on rice which was fried with onion, peas and sweetcorn. As a bit of a strange substitute I used potatoes instead of chicken. In retrospect I would have used tofu or halloumi, but as odd as it may sound, the potato was also nice. The reason I used the potato was because of a lack of options in my fridge. Granted, if I was vegetarian I would have more of these items, however from daily essential shopping, potato was the best substitute I had left. I can't say that I liked it as much as chicken, but it wasn't as disappointing as I had originally anticipated. The switch from chicken to potato saved me 63p.

I had started the week concerned about my Sunday meal, and was glad that it was too warm for a roast dinner. If it hadn't been, I think finding an alternative which is as good as roast chicken would have been very hard from a meat eater's perspective. I had looked up some recipes and none of them called out as roast dinner worthy. Having to watch others have roast chicken while I had squash, nut roast or alike would have been the hardest part of the week.

Sunday's total savings: £1.33

Conclusion:

I found that lunch options were definitely the hardest to think of, potentially because I spend less time planning them. While dinners were easy to get creative with, making interesting and nutritious lunches was much harder to do. Therefore lunches for me were quite uninspired. Additionally, options were much more limited when buying lunch out compared to dinners.

From my perspective, vegetarianism is easier if you like cooking. Everyone has meals they regularly make because they like them and enjoy cooking them, for me a vegetarian curry has become one of these meals. If you like cooking and trying new recipes, then vegetarianism is much nicer and will inevitably be easier to sustain. I found the meals with more imagination, which substituted meat with other ingredients, were better than the ones which used meat alternatives as an easy replacement. For example, chillie con carne is a simple meal that I have most weeks, and while using Quorn was nice, it wasn't as good as the curry or risotto in which there were no meat substitutes.

This week's total savings was £4.92. Although it doesn't sound like much, and week by week this would vary, based on this it would save £256 every year. It would also save the planet around 730kg of CO2 a year, 14kg a week. This is about 16% of what a typical car will emit each year. And for me the environmental impact is the main reason I would become a vegetarian.

Although a week is not necessarily long enough to convincingly say that I will, or won't go completely vegetarian, it is long enough to say that I could. I don't believe I would be sacrificing as much as I originally thought I would. There were a few close calls with ingredients that I had thought were vegetarian, for example parmesan. But only once that I was truly disappointed I couldn't have meat. (A half price sausage roll situation). Since my trial I have given up fish completely and gone from 2 or 3 vegetarian meals a week to 4 or 5 and intend to extend this further. I believe in 'imperfectly vegetarian', that the occasional sausage roll, or a slip up on what cheese you use doesn't mean you can't still call yourself a vegetarian. With this in mind I would encourage others to try even one more veggie meal a week. Even a small change from everyone, such as cutting meat intake from 100g to 50g per meal, would make a massive overall difference.