No Meat Challenge – Conclusions
Three Bean Chilli: One word: Awesome!
Well it’s been just over a month since I started my “no meat challenge” and I can happily say I completed it successfully, within the rules I set out in my original No Meat Challenge Throwdown post. As you may or may not remember, it ended up being more of an “Eat less meat” challenge, but let’s have a quick reminder of the rules:
- Only one meal containing meat allowed per day (This allows us to enjoy the wedding meals fully, just need to make sure we don’t have a fry up for breakfast the same morning!)
- We will also cook 3 veggie evening meals per week, so will have 3 full veggie days
- We are still allowed to eat cheese, milk, eggs.
Here are some of my random thoughts and experiences on the challenge, in no particular order
The best thing – about doing this was trying out some new food, things that I may have never tried before. I was surprised, for example, to like meals such as vegetarian chilli, seeing as I previously had a huge and irrational fear of eating beans, which stems from a dislike of baked beans. I can safely say I still hate baked beans but other beans have been firmly accepted into my edible foods list.
The lowest point – of the challenge was when we were driving down to Devon for a family members 60th Birthday celebrations and I was in charge of packing sandwiches to stop for some brunch. I made them but left them in the fridge, and we ended up seeing the dreaded golden arches at the next service station and getting a Macdonalds. I could have had some porridge but I figured “When in Rome” and went with one of the breakfast muffins (it was actually far more disgusting than I remember from the last time I had one. I think you have to be hungover or still inebriated from the night before to enjoy one of those things!). Anyway I was disappointed with myself as I’d wasted my meat based meal on something of such low quality and questionable origins, but every cloud has a silver lining and I tried the Veggie Chilli as mentioned above later on because of it, so it worked out pretty good in the end!
Bending the rules – I’ll admit to having a fish based meal some nights, but I pretty much ate a vegetarian lunch every day anyway (Cheese and bread/toast got a bit tedious after a while I have to admit! Any Veggie lunch suggestions would be very welcome in the comments!!!). So I definitely did not eat meat twice on any given day (or even meat + fish), but maybe a couple of our “3 meals a week” were fish instead of exclusively veggie ones. I guess you could argue this wasn’t breaking the rules, but maybe just bending them slightly. So I will!
My Top Five Vegetarian Meals
In Sunday evening radio chart countdown style:
5. Paella style rice – We half cheated and included some shellfish in this, but I think it would be just as nice without it as a tomatoey rice dish and veg dish.
4. Vegetarian Omelette – You can keep it plain as in my original recipe or add in all kinds of veg (tomatoes, peppers, jalapenos, courgettes, broccoli… you get the picture) just chuck it in, and add plenty of cheese and seasoning. Can’t get enough of them!
3. Vegetarian curry with Bombay Potatoes – I made my normal curry, which has loads of veggies in it anyway, but added more and missed out the meat. It does seem a bit like something is missing on this one, but it’s still nice in it’s own right. The Bombay Potatoes kinda made up for no meat. I will have to post the recipe for this soon!
2. Vegetarian stir fry – One dish I can truly say I never even noticed there wasn’t any meat in it. Amazing discovery. Basically just follow the recipe for my Pork stir fry here but leave out the Pork. Simples!
1. Five Bean Chilli – I actually had this in a pub originally and it was fantastic. I then tried making a 3 bean chilli myself which was a bit of a mash up of the recipes I found here and here. I made some wedges at home which complemented the chilli amazingly, but it also went just as well with rice and/or nachos. Just make sure you have plenty of jalapenos and grated cheese to go with it. I ate this four days running it was so nice!
Other thoughts
- I, we, most people, eat far more meat than I think we think we do.
- There are some great tasting vegetarian meals out there that I would never have tried if not doing this challenge!
- I seemed to fill the gap (especially at lunch) with the dairy and carbs route, which I’m not sure is sustainable long term (for me)
- I’m also not sure whether increasing milk, cheese and eggs as a substitute for meat protein is really that much better for you, compared to a normal balanced diet of small amounts of milk combined with dairy.
- Beans, lentils, legumes and the like are no doubt better for you than dairy, but then most of these are imported from afar…
- … so are we not just better of buying small amounts of local meats to get our protein, in terms of being good environmentally conscious citizens?
- I guess if you are a vegetarian, vegan, or just trying to cut out some meat from your diet then you may agree with some, all or none of my thoughts above, depending on the exact reasons you decided to do this. And if you are a red blooded carnivore then perhaps you think we are all stark raving bonkers.
The bottom line is… I still love meat, and I am pretty certain I will never stop eating it, but this has really made appreciate eating it more. When I eat it now I savour every bite, and think much more about where it came from and what may have been sacrificed* to get that piece of animal from farm to plate.
I would heartily recommend anyone who is remotely conscious about these issues, or just wants to save a bit of money, or thinks they want to try some new tasty cooking, to give your own similar challenge a go!
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*Not in the rip a cows heart out and eat it in front of a crowd of thousands Aztec style sacrifice, but just in terms of resources spent on this Earth that could have been better used or distributed more fairly and sustainably. But you knew that already (I hope!)
Discussion (19) ¬
Well done on completing your challenge TFS!
I think I could do to do something like this as I am definitely stuck in the eat-meat-at-practically-every-meal mentality.
I have tried to do more veg based meals and quick meals like jacket potato, cheese and salad but in my head, I think that veg only meals are pretty boring but thats my fault as I’ve not been adventurous with my cooking.
Doesn’t help that i can’t stand mushrooms which seem to be in every vegetarian recipe I see!
I think its time I crack open a couple of cookbooks(or websites) and look for some more exciting vegetarian meals as my purse will probably thank me for buying less meat, more veg when food shopping!
Yea it’s easy to get bored. I should have posted some more websites I found to be helpful/inspiring at the bottom of the article, I will do so now!
I’ll post up the recipe to my version of the 3 bean chilli I did as well as that was so delicious (in case you hadn’t guessed by now!)
Oh by the way I can’t stand mushrooms either so you are safe in the knowledge that any food ideas I post on here will be absent of the devils fungi!!! 🙂
Congrats, and glad you enjoyed the challenge! I’ve been eating a Whole Food / Plant-Based diet for nearly 2 years. Best thing I ever did. As you’ve begun discovering, there are loads of excellent recipes out there for meat-free eating. I think there’s considerably more variety in my diet now than when I ate meat, and I know a lot more healthful nutrition!
That’s great to hear Kurt, thanks!
I will definitely be eating way more veggie meals in future, and trying to try out new things even more, It’s easy to get stuck in a rut with the food we eat, so sometimes you need to purposely shake things up a bit.
It’s been a really good fun, not to mention tasty, month 🙂
Yum, that chili looks good! Eating meatless is such an immense money-saver. I love meat on occasion, but I’ve grown very interested in vegetarian cooking lately. There are so many great food bloggers who do it well and make it look delicious.
Thanks for the comment Jen! Feel free to pass on any of your favourite recommendations for recipes?
Cheers!
No meat challenge, huh? I think I can only last a week.
Christopher James recently posted…The Taoist Badass
It’s certainly not for everyone Christopher, that’s for sure!
As it happens, I made a big batch of dahl over the weekend. A consequence of that damn work thing slurping my time so I ran out of freezer-food. Normally, there’s a bag of: chicken curry, chilli (mince, chunky, veg), dahl (if I’m lucky), and some other generics that I’ve frozen.
As it ran dry, I made a big pot batch on Sunday. Two coarsely chopped onions, fresh chillies that were left over, boiled to a nice sloppiness yellow split [lentils?, peas?] from waitrose in the bag (with a bit of salt), the half jar of curry paste, tin of chopped toms. Cooked, seasoned, decanted, frozen.
Snaffled one this evening with a pita bread (cursed sainsbury on the way home had no naan). Nom!
Dahl sounds good, I have to try this! Thanks for the recommendation!
Can’t wait until we (hopefully) move and can fit in a bigger freezer, love the batch cooking method for time and hassle saving!
Such a good challenge to issue to yourself. I know I eat way, way too much meat…I feel like I want to include it in every meal, which is crazy.
Most people fall into that camp DB40, well I certainly did and most people I know do. Always good to rock the boat and see if there is anything else different and possibly better out there I think. Cheers!
My wife and I did a similar challenge for about a week, but because I wasn’t writing about it and we didn’t have defined rules, we ended up just eating less meat. We tried to only have meat at once meal per day, like you.
We also discovered the bean soup/chilli. It’s good stuff!
Thanks for the good recipes, I’ll have to check one of the new ones out.
No problems Nick. Even just a general idea to try less meat is a good start I think. That’s pretty much all I have done to be honest, it wasn’t like I’ve ever felt deprived at all over the month, but have stuck to my, admittedly fairly easy to stick to, rules. 🙂
You need to introduce salads, boiled vegetables, a lot of fruits and yogurt to your diet. I have been trying it for the last month and I have lost about 9lbs. I know it is not about diet but this is a healthy eating as well.
Recently I have been reducing meet from my diet as well. What I do is that when I eat meat I eat it on its own like steak or chicken breast and vegetables and rice on the side. This way, I appreciate the meat and it seems to satisfy me for a few days that I am not craving for more. Love your tips and ideas, by the way especially cooking your favorite recipes but without meat.
Thanks for the tips tci!
Yep I certainly don’t need to lose any weight (yea yea I know… what a git) but I have no doubt that if you do want to lose weight then going partly or fully veg is a great way to do it.
We eat mostly veggie for frugal/health/environmental reasons.
Some of our favourites:
Falafels: homemade costs about 20p per portion. We stuff into homemade wraps or shop bought pitta with hummus/tzatziki, salad, pickles and chillis. So delicious and great cold for work the next day
Baked bean lasagne (I know you would HATE this, but it costs 34p per portion and we love it)
Curries: Lentil curry, or potato and cauliflower, are some of our favourites. We buy spices, rice and chapatti flour in bulk from our local Asian shop. It’s fun to shop there and it saves £££
Butternut squash and sage risotto
Peppers stuffed with cous cous mixed with leftover chilli, topped with cheese
Mushroom or brown lentil bolognese. A glug of cheap plonk really lifts this and you can “cheat” and add a beef stock cube for extra flavour without the extra fat/expense
Thanks for the ideas Mina (well, apart from the baked bean lasagne of course, surely this is the work of the devil!?) 🙂
Butternut squash is something we need to give more of a try. I made a few curries with it a while back and really liked it, I’ll try the risotto as growing some sage on my window sill right now.
Mrs T is allergic to peppers which is a tad annoying as it does rule out a fair amount of yummy looking veggie dishes, so we have to find alternatives.
Falafel’s are a must try, I only discovered them a few months ago and thought they were delicious. There is a food market down the road from work that sells them in wraps for like £5 so he must be making an absolute killing on that!!! I will definitely give the home made versions a try ASAP!
Cheers again!