Worst Vegetarian Ever

I was not excited about the prospect of giving up meat for a week. I thought about it after reading The Omnivore's Dilemma last summer, but never committed to anything. I eat meat with most - if not all - of my meals so I decided the easiest route would be to try a lacto-ovo vegetarian diet. I figured I would just replace meat with lots of cheese, yogurt and other protein rich dairy products and legumes.

Things started out well. I ate a breakfast similar to the one pictured above for the first 2 or 3 days. Sometimes I would have a bowl of cereal, yogurt or fried eggs with it as well. Homemade granola bars were a nice snack between breakfast and lunch too.

Lunches were often eaten at school. Cheese pizza, muffins or croissants from the student cafe or a trip to St. Lawrence Market. Before the diet, a trip to the market meant a massive sandwich with cheese and several different cold cuts on freshly baked bread. Since that wasn't an option I looked around for a few minutes until I found a place selling pasta. I decided to try the cheese ravioli.

Even though it was a large portion and extremely tasty, I still felt that something was missing. Of course something was missing. The meat.

When it came to dinner I was pretty lucky. My mother is vegan and my sister is a vegetarian so it was a simple thing to ask them for a few of their favourite recipes. Actually having time to cook after school meant I was able to make some really tasty, meat-free dishes. Again, no matter how good they were, the meals just seemed to be incomplete without meat.

Kale salad

Pecan-parmesan butternut squash

One of my favourites was actually a caesar salad topped with tofu. The tofu was shaped, seasoned and pan fried into imitation popcorn chicken. It was so good that once I tried it I didn't stop eating (even to take a picture)until it was gone.

Another snack option

It was probably all in my head, but the lack of meat was starting to give me cravings that I seemed to try and fill with sugar. It started innocently enough; a little brown sugar on my cereal or some honey on apple slices..but by day 3, I was snacking on cookies and apple pie between meals...and then this:

A few strawberries with my whipped cream

I had tried to coordinate my diet with vegetarian week in Concepts class. Once I realized we were making sushi in Foods of the World (which I had to taste of course), I made a switch to the pescetarian diet. I like to think the decision to switch was out of my hands but I also had some arctic char left from class that I really wanted to deep fry.

Tempura arctic char with homemade tartar sauce,
falafel bites and hand cut fries

At the end of the week I was getting bored of fish. I noticed that before switching to the pescetarian diet my meals had a larger variety of flavours and textures. Overall, I think I could do it long-term if I truly had the desire, it would just take a while to get over the cravings. The first day after the diet ended, I was very excited to barbecue something and ribs were on sale so I tossed a couple racks on and made some sauce.

Ribs and rice

I think it is very important as a chef to have menu items that appeal to vegetarians. It is a large and fast growing market and having both meat proteins and vegetarian options seems like the best way to increase traffic. As for me, I always taste what I cook and eating any meat regardless of how little means you are not a vegetarian. As you can see above, I am definitely not continuing with any sort of diet.