Greening pains

I love food. More importantly, I love cooking! I was indifferent to the joys of a meal cooked with reckless experimental ingredients and humour until I was about 26 and cooking for myself for the first time. Free from expectations of a meal which had to be, as a minimum, edible I threw myself into cooking indigestible food experiments which made me laugh at the impossibility of the ingredients (apple goat soup, anyone?) and stand back in shock on the rare occasion that the madcap experiment actually paid off (oh loveliest of chicken coffee pasta, I was never unable to replicate your exquisite dark and tasty flavours).

Gradually my experiments became more tempered by reason (and hunger!) which demanded a modicum of sense and technique was required in order to make tasty edible meals. Cooking with friends taught me new wonderful ways of experimenting with new ingredients in a variety of traditions. The random acts of gastronomic mixmastery gradually turned into a trusty arsenal of ingredients which could be cooked in a variety of ways. Some traditional, some mildly experimental, but almost always edible. That is, until about 7 months ago.

The one constant in all my cooking has always been meat. So easy to build a tasty meal around the ripe flavour of beef cheeks, or the subtle teasing taste of chicken. The texture alone can hold a meal together. But I have found it more and more unappetising to partake of my once beloved beasties. Happily nibbling on a drumstick, I'd suddenly be aware that this was once the leg of an animal. And then have a clear image of the body of which it was once an indispensable member. My lemon peppery feast would suddenly become a dismembered limb, a carcass made of bone, cartilage and muscle. Dear God no! How did this happen?

It has been a slowly growing awareness which I've been studiously ignoring for a while now. But late last year, I had the unenviable experience of carrying a par-cooked parrot which had been caught under the bonnet of my car in a freak accident and burned to a crisp. As I carried it to the bin, I could smell the roast chicken smell emanate and watched the carcass with horrified suspicion just waiting for the poor critter to wake up and berate me with outrage for its horrific end. And the link between carcass and cooked meat was undeniably displayed before me in living (dead) glory. So that was that. No more meat for me, my dear parrot. I've partaken of many a winged creature but I've never had to admit to the fact that they were once sentient beings.

So then came a period of reading copiously about factory farming, the mechanics of meat production and the baffling economics of easily affordable protein in 1st world countries. Alongside that came some paltry (no puns intended!) attempts at vegetarian cooking. It almost always seems to end with me giving up on my bland meal and boiling up some trusty dahl. Tasty, to be sure, but only for the first couple of weeks!

I'm hoping to find my cooking mojo by trying a series of vegetarian meals over the next month. I'll share the recipes and see how it goes. Viva les legumes!