Suddenly Vegetarian

Not me (I’m still very much an omnivore) but my daughter, who declared as much on Wednesday though in reality, she’s been shades of vegetarian for a long, long while.. and she’s been reading The Omnivore’s Dilemma (Young Reader’s Edition) on and off for the past year, growing more and more wary of mass-produced meat.

I’m not sure what exactly pushed her over the edge but I suspect it was a meal we had on Monday. Mike had been walking our niece through making pasta from scratch and had created three different ravioli-fillings. One of them involved lamb and, though we’ve eaten lamb many times, she broke down in tears.

Luckily, we are used to cooking meatless meals which have been part of our diet for many years — both for health and frugal reasons.  We cook a mean asian-peanut-tofu and enjoy hummus, meatless chili, pasta, and other stand-bys. I think there will likely be nights when we have chicken or similar and she gets an alternative.

After she made it known, I wanted to start planning meals,  and I realized I had purged my Moosewood cookbooks  (Moosewood Restaurant Kitchen Garden and Sundays at Moosewood Restaurant) prior to our most recent move.  I was pleased to find that both Mollie Katzen and the Moosewood Restaurant share selected recipes online, though, yay!  Oh, and apparently, Victoria is the most vegetarian-friendly city in North America (based on percentage of restaurants that are either vegan, vegetarian or vegetarian friendly)! So, overall, it’s not going to be too tough for us to adapt. At least she didn’t declare herself vegan — she loves cheese too much.

In other food news, today, Mike and I winter-readied the garden — we pulled out the last remnants of food plants, weeded and turned the soil, planted some ground cover crops and sprinkled on a layer of leaves which are on their way to rotting in this evening’s rain. We did that for three of the four raised beds — one still has food growing, mostly onions. I also transplanted a large flat-leaf parsley plant that was lurking among the weeds in one bed. The biggest harvest today was the carrots (I mistakenly bought a container variety so they are all a weird stubby shape). We’ll be putting them to good use tomorrow, making a winter root vegetable roast with some fresh herbs. Yum!

Oh, and in other garden news, I have been full of rage this evening after learning about CETA — the Canadian-EU Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement currently being “arranged” without public debate — from City Harvest Co-Op. At issue is seed saving which is threatened because of GM crops — basically, any seeds saved could be seized for copyright infringement even if it is unintentional due to GM contamination from neighbouring farms. As if that weren’t enough, the agreement could also bar cities, schools or hospitals from giving preference to local foods. Excuse me, but no effing way! Not on my watch. Luckily, there are other people fighting it, including the Council of Canadians. Want a run down of the whole evil thing? Check out this great cartoon factsheet (pdf). GRRRR.