Party Season

It's December and that means Party Season.  On a dull December day it's a chance to put your glad rags on and have some fun with friends and family.  It may be the office party, a night out with loved ones, cocktails with the girls or high tea with your nan.  Either way it is usually an opportunity to binge out on a sea of food and drink.

Party food can mean champagne and canapés or a cuppa and a buffet.  The former can be a nightmare for the vegetarian as the waiters gliding around the room quite often aren't aware of the contents of the food they are presenting. Chorizo on bruschetta can easily be mistaken for an innocent cherry tomato topping, particularly at a party lit only by candlelight and fairy lights!  Equally, even if there are staff standing behind the mountains of food laid out on the trestle table, they often don't know the difference between tsatziki and taramasalata!

Peter Kay does a well known sketch about buffet food and he's not wrong -vol-au-vents, chicken legs, cheesecake repeated across the table with a few garlic breads thrown in for good measure!

At one party I was eating bread and cheese (yeah really) when I noticed something on the eyebrow of a friend.  I said "oh dear you've got a crumb on your forehead" as I reached up to flick it off.  "It's not a crumb ... it's a wart!" he replied.  Sadly the ground did not open up and swallow me; but I did have to eat some humble pie with my bread and cheese!

Fruit and Nuts!

Today is Stir-up-Sunday!  It is the last Sunday before Advent and traditionally the day to make Christmas pudding.  This is to allow the flavours of fruit, nuts, spices and alcohol to have plenty of time to mature before the big day.  Originally the pudding was made from 13 ingredients, representing Jesus and his twelve Disciples, and everyone in the family would have a stir and make a wish, moving the spoon from East to West to represent the journey the Three Kings made.  A silver sixpence was sometimes added for good luck.  My Grandad would spend an age practically sieving the pudding, whether to get rich or to avoid choking, we were never sure!  Vegetarians, however, should watch out that no suet is added to their pudding!

Whilst I consider myself "awkward" for being vegetarian, many people are equally awkward in their dislike of any dried fruit.  Sadly they do not get to enjoy the seasonal pleasures of Christmas cake, pudding and mince pies.  One friend regularly asks the waiter if the sticky toffee pudding contains dates as she cannot bear to eat any dried fruit.

Nuts are another seasonal treat and particularly good for us (unless of course you have an allergy). They provide much needed protein for we vegetarians but are also good at bringing cholesterol levels down too.  Whilst in New York I discovered some delicious honey-roasted nuts sold in carts on the streets under the brand Nuts4Nuts - delicious! 

In Yorkshire I saw this sign outside a pet shop - just made me smile!

Giving it up!

Eating a barbecued pork chop on a campsite in Hawes in 1990 was the last time I agreed to eat meat. Whilst chewing the grainy texture the realisation that I did not like it, nor any other meat, was an epiphany! I, like most people had accepted meat as the substantial part of any meal but what were the options? I decided to live a meat free diet for a month and see how I got on.  The options, in the beginning, were a lot of jacket potatoes and copious amounts of ratatouille which I made on a cauldron like scale and froze in portions.  My husband called it "mush" as he continued to eat the meat I cooked for him.

Eating a piece of chorizo at a party in 2013 was the last time I ate meat, without agreeing to.  This has happened several times over the last 24 years.  There was the time in a well known department store restaurant when I ordered their vegetarian quiche only to realise, after several mouthfuls, that the red onions were in fact small cubes of ham.  At a local craft fare I ordered minestrone soup and found it loaded with ham hock.  Then, at a summer barbecue a drunken friend decided it would be good fun if I tried a sausage.  It got as far as my lips before I was able to stop him!  My best friend, herself a pescatarian, was caught ladling fish stock into the mushroom risotto she was cooking for me.  I could go on!  

There is the well known joke that it's okay for a vegetarian to have a ham sandwich as long as it's wafer thin ham!  Comedy comes from real life and it has been suggested that I "pick off the ham" from a Hawaiian pizza and that the pieces of meat in a casserole offered to me "are only tiny!" 

However, once the decision was made, I never wanted to go back ..... No, not even for a bacon sandwich!

The Vegetarian Tart!!

DEFINITIONS

Vegetarian: 

noun - a person who does not eat meat or fish, and sometimes other animal products, especially for moral, religious, or health reasons.

Tart: 

noun - an open pastry case containing a sweet or savoury filling.

noun - a woman who dresses or behaves in a way that is considered tasteless and sexually provocative - a woman of loose morals.

adjective - sharp or acid in taste - cutting, bitter or sarcastic

If you have logged on to my blog looking for Vegetarian news, views and amusing anecdotes, you have come to the right place.  If you typed in the word Tart and were looking for something along the lines of the second noun, you may be sadly disappointed!

Many people say to me "but do you eat fish?"  "No, I am a vegetarian" say I to the puzzled faces. If I were to eat fish I would be a Pescatarian: noun - a person who does not eat meat but does eat fish. Bizarrely, many of my friends are so-called vegetarians who eat fish.  It seems that calling oneself a pescatarian is just not the done thing!

On my numerous visits to various restaurants I have often been faced with the choice of ... a tart (usually goats cheese).  When the waiter (and I'll get on to them later) returns to the table bearing said meal, he bellows "who is The Vegetarian Tart?" My friends delight in pointing at me and squealing "she's here!!"