World Vegetarian Day

 

Published 1 October 2020

Happy World Vegetarian Day

This blog isn’t about facts and figures, it’s a story about being vegetarian.  

Hi I’m Susie, and I’ve been vegetarian for 14 years (except for the odd slip up where people have dished me up a chicken pakora instead of a vege one, and it took my mouth longer to figure that out than it did for my appetite to swallow a mouthful). I kind of stumbled across being vegetarian after attending a week-long Students Against Driving Drunk (SADD) youth leaders camp at Living Springs in Christchurch where I choose the vegetarian menu and loved it. Feeling confident, I went on to make all those yummy and simple meals at home.

As a vegetarian I am often asked “why are you vegetarian”? Which I find odd. I can honestly say hand on heart that I’ve never asked a meat-eater – why they eat meat.  

The simple answer is that I don’t like the taste of meat, which I guess makes it easy for me. My parents will tell you that despite their best efforts to get me to eat meat – I’d always find a way around it. These days, I still don’t like the taste of meat, but my motivations behind being vegetarian have changed.  I do it because it is one way I can lower my carbon footprint, not add to deforestation, increase methane levels, or increase water used to grow crops for animal feed.

Here at Sustainability Trust living more sustainably is in our DNA, so this World Vege day we are a hosting a shared lunch where anyone can bring along their favourite vege or vegan dish to share.

This is one of my favourite recipes, tweaked to perfection.

+ Carrot Nut Loaf

Serves 4 people (it looks small but is super filling). You can also use this recipe to make burger patties out of these ingredients.

INGREDIENTS

  • 2 cups of salted peanuts or unsalted.
  • 1 ½ cups of wholemeal breadcrumbs (fresh) I use two bits of Vogels toast.
  • 2 cups finely grated carrots
  • 1 tsp oregano
  • 1 free-range egg or egg replacement
  • 3 Tbsp oil (I prefer olive)
  • 3 Tbsp fresh orange juice
  • ½ cup boiling water with 1 vege stock cube.

METHOD

  1. Grind the fresh bread if using into breadcrumbs in a food processor – remove and set aside.
  2. Grind the peanuts to your taste in the food processor (I prefer very fine)
  3. Mix in breadcrumbs, carrots and herbs.
  4. Add in beaten egg, oil, orange juice and stock
  5. Mix well and place in a lined loaf or flat tin.
  6. BAKE for roughly 30 minutes at 180c. Should be brown on top, firm to touch, and knife removed clear.

SERVE with Rocket sauce or your favourite chutney and a side salad.

You can check out some of teams favourite and yummy easy-as recipes below.

It’s ok if you don’t feel like cooking a vegetarian meal on World Vege Day, but maybe one day you might just want to change up your repertoire with these failsafe recipes, or maybe its time for meatless Mondays. Whatever the reason we hope you enjoy the experience   

Believe me, I am not perfect, In fact, I think being vegetarian offsets some of my other not very sustainable behaviours – but what I do know is that if everyone makes small changes, then big things can happen.

Link to facts and figures from http://www.vegetarian.org.nz/

Animal agriculture is responsible for 18 % of greenhouse gas emissions, more than the combined exhaust from all transportation (FAO, 2006)

  • The leading causes of rain-forest destruction are livestock and feed-crops (FAO, 2006)

  • For every 1 kg of fish caught, up to 5 kg of unintended marine species are caught and discarded as by-kill.  

Search for Vege/Vegan Restaurants near you - https://www.happycow.net/

New Zealand Vegetarian Information - http://www.vegetarian.org.nz/

 
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