Meat Free Days

We have never been a family who must have red meat everyday. We enjoy fish and pasta dishes, salads and chicken of course. I have never been vegetarian, had a daughter who dabbled as a teenager, and don’t ever intend to become one. I do enjoy chicken and fish, and of course bacon would always pull me back into the meat eating camp. Especially the smell of it sizzling in a pan.🥓

 I always feel if I deny myself completely then I will fail. So occasionally a bacon sandwich or toad in the hole won’t hurt.  But in this day of conscience eating I do try more and more to mix things up.

In the past vegetarian food was pretty boring but now with magazines full of vegetarian and vegan dishes it is so much easier. Delicious bean chillis and pasta dishes have become a more regular additions to our menus.

Last week while in Aldi I came across tins of JACKFRUIT.  Now I’d eaten it as a fruit in China but never as a savoury dish. I’d been reading how it works in pork recipes as the texture when cooked is similar, especially as a substitute in a pulled pork recipe.  So thought why not and decided to give it a go. Nothing to lose.

The recipe was so simple.

1 onion thinly sliced
2 tins Jackfruit (drained and hard core cur away)
1 cup bbq sauce
1/2 cup water.

Fry onion until soft. Add jackfruit, sauce and water. Cook on medium heat until sauce bubbles down and is sticky, stirring regularly. Recipe said pull fruit apart with forks but I found breaking it up with the wooden spoon as I went did the job just fine. And less to wash up 😂.
You can add a dash of a hot sauce at the end if you want but I had a spicy bbq sauce so didn’t bother.




I served in brioche buns, also Aldi purchase, corn on the cob and a pineapple salsa. A filling tasty meat free meal which certainly didn’t leave me feeling I’d gone meatless.

I can see us eating less and less meat in the future and occasionally it may be vegan but more by chance than intention. I don’t quite have the willpower, or to be honest, inclination to go full on vegan or indeed vegetarian, but will play my part in trying to save the planet by reducing meat intake. It may make us healthier, but what  it will give me is  the opportunity to try new recipes and experiment with dishes. There will be successes and failures, I have no doubt about that, but a couple of meat free days a week isn’t going to hurt, and who knows that may rise to 3 or 4 in time.

Just as a bit of a rant the one phrase that I hear more and more is “I’m flexitarian”. Surely that is what we all were and most of us continue to be, vegan and vegetarians aside. A balanced sensible way of eating and getting all our dietary neeeds fulfilled. Sorry this phrase just annoys me. Good to get it off my chest.

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