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People who are not vegetarians probably ask themselves how a vegetarian cook can make vegetarian meals stimulating with only vegetables at his disposal. This same consideration might be preventing or at least deterring some meat-eaters from giving up meat and attempting to follow vegetarianism. The fact is, that vegetarian meals are not only ‘meat and two veg’ without the meat, although forty years ago there were many vegetarians who began like that.

However, a routine of ‘meat and two veg’ without the meat is not sustainable. A person who eats meals such as these will soon become sick, particularly if there is no fish, dairy or eggs in the diets either. Many vegetarians choose to eat a small amount to dairy, fish or eggs to help provide much needed protein, which can be difficult to replace in a met-free diet.

Vegetarians have to plan their meals far more than meat-eaters in order to eat everything that a body needs to grow, repair itself and defend itself from disease. It will obviously take some time for the newcomer to vegetarianism to learn new recipes and how to cook them so in the beginning, many vegetarians do indeed cook meals which are of the ‘meat and two veg’ without the meat sort.

This is all right if you know what to exchange for the meat. There are several items in the stores, but one of the most helpful is soya in all its various types. Tempeh is a soya bean meat substitute and so is tofu. Both these can be used to supplant meat for a supply of protein.

The good thing about these substances is that they can be made to taste of anything you like – they take on flavours fairly readily. They can also be treated to resemble the texture of meat.

Seitan (wheat gluten) is a similarly flexible and useful product, but you have to be sure that you are not allergic to gluten first, because this allergy appears to be spreading. Soya bean products and seitan can be readily bought at health food shops and Oriental stores.

As you get more capable at cooking vegetarian meals, you will almost certainly rely less heavily on these things. Beans and nuts are also helpful substitutes, but you will almost certainly have to learn how to make use of them first. Take a look at chickpeas, lentils but kidney beans.

Soya by-products like soya milk and soya yoghurt and even soya margarine can be used to take the place of regular dairy products. You can also create a type of healthy milk from rice water or / and blended nuts. Besides making milk and casseroles from nuts, some nuts are fantastic in salads. Have a go with walnuts, cashews and almonds and try seeds too like sesame and poppy. Sunflower seeds and others are great for snacks.

Bread and sandwiches are tasty vegetarian fast foods. Experiment with different types of flour. Get yourself a bread-making machine and bake your own bread. Preparation time is minutes and you can set the timer to cook the bread for when you like. Seven in the morning is better than any alarm clock.

If you would like to know more about Welsh food, food in general or cooking eggs in particular, just visit Traditional Welsh Recipes

There was a time, say thirty or forty years ago, when vegetarians had a hard time telling non-vegetarians why it was so important to stop eating meat. The situation was made worse because vegetarians back then did not have the support from the food manufacturers and supermarkets that they do now either. In short, it was far harder to be a vegetarian than it is now.

Moreover, in those far off days, lots of hippies and others following an ‘alternative’ lifestyle were first generation vegetarians and so they could not look to their parents for support and advice. Those individuals are now in their forties and fifties with children and even grandchildren of their own, many of whom are also vegetarian.

Being second or even third generation vegetarian is very different from being first, not least because they have been able to see the effects of a vegetarian lifestyle on their parents and even grandparents. It might never cross such a person’s mind to crave a bacon sandwich with tomato sauce or a French dip beef sandwich au jus, because the idea is abhorrent to them.

They have not had to make a conscious decision or a huge physical effort to strip meat from their diet after perhaps eating it for twenty years or more. My father gave up meat for ethical as well as practical reasons when he was sixty and he craved ‘bacon butties’ (sandwiches) for the rest of his life. He found it hard.

His reasons for giving up meat were fairly typical: he objected to the cruelty to animals that is brought about by intensive farming techniques in some countries; he objected to the use of hormones and preservatives in live animals and he believed that eating so much meat was not a sustainable lifestyle for a growing world populace, that was growing steadily rich enough that everyone would would like to eat more meat sooner or later.

Society does not make it easier or encourage the would-be vegetarian. The farming industry has grown huge and they have a personal interest in selling us their dairy, meat and eggs. It is difficult to escape pictures and hoardings marketing their products. Although the situation is better nowadays, restaurants still cater usually to the meat-eaters and vegetarian meals always seem small and costly in comparison.

Fortunately there are lots of ‘Eastern’ restaurants that cater naturally to the vegetarian because many Easterners are vegetarian. You can always find vegetarian meals on a Chinese, Japanese or an Indian menu. Hindus are vegetarian. Thai restaurants will also have a high quantity of meatless meals.

However, if you do not enjoy spicy food, you are back in the pizza hut or the sandwich bar in most towns. Society has moved on, but there is still a long way to go but the vegetarian life is definitely becoming easier to sustain. There is support in numbers, so it would be worth taking vegetarian cookery lessons if your resolve begins to weaken.

Owen Jones, the author of this piece writes on many topics, but is currently concerned with vegetarian recipes for kids. If you want to know more or check out some special offers, please go to our website at Vegetarian Sandwich Recipes.

It is very useful to know something concerning the most common constituents of foodstuffs, so that you can use this information to your advantage while choosing and cooking food. The more you know about the constituents of food the better able you will be to choose the best way of preparing that food. In this article we will discuss some constituents of food.

Carbohydrates are a concentrated kind of energy as is fat. However, the two substances differ in a number of ways, not least in that fat supplies energy in a very concentrated kind whereas carbohydrates provide energy in a more economical way. Over indulging in either fats or carbohydrates will result in becoming overweight quite quickly.

Therefore, this is the region that dieters should concentrate on, although ‘experts’ disagree which is the most damaging. Traditional diets recommend cutting back on fats, whereas some more contemporary diets advocate practically eliminating carbohydrates from one’s diet.

The fact is that the body and most of the food that we put into it is made up of chemical elements, the most important of which are nitrogen, carbon, hydrogen and oxygen. Protein is the only thing that we eat that contains nitrogen, which goes a long way to account for why protein is essential to us.

Protein is also the most difficult substance to find in the vegetarian diet. It is not impossible by any means, but the choices are severely limited because most people get their protein from meat, fish, dairy and eggs.

The other three elements: carbon, hydrogen and oxygen are constituents of carbohydrates. In fact, the very word ‘carbohydrate’ suggests the names of those three elements. ‘Carbo’ – carbon and ‘hydrate’ – hydrogen and oxygen, as in water. Carbohydrates are most extant in starches and sugars.

Starch is one of the most omnipresent forms of carbohydrate. It is to be found exclusively in vegetables and pulses et cetera. When starch is boiled, it expands and bursts its cell walls causing water to thicken yet when it is cooked with dry heat, it melts and turns into dextrine, which is a stage before it turns into sugar.

Sugar is another vital constituent of carbohydrates and is also found mostly in vegetables and fruit, although there is also some in milk in the form or lactose. Corn produces glucose. Young vegetables contain sugar, but as they become older it becomes starch.

Sugar melts with the application of heat, but if it is already in liquid form, it will give off water and begin to caramelize. The characteristic colour or caramel is brown, but if it is over cooked, it becomes dark brown and bitter. Sugar in fruit and vegetables will leach out into boiling water and so will be lost, unless that water is salvaged and used elsewhere.

Cellulose is a form of carbohydrate closely related to starch. It is to be found in the structure of plants and vegetables but although it is largely indigestible, it cannot be ignored in the human diet. Cellulose surrounds the goodness we are looking for in vegetables, so by cooking this food we are trying to break down the cellulose to release the goodness.

Young vegetables have thinner cellulose than older ones, which is why some vegetables need to be cooked quickly and fiercely although others have to be cooked slowly yet gently.

Owen Jones, the author of this piece writes on several subjects, but is at present concerned with French dip sandwich recipes. If you want to know more or check out some great offers, please go to our website at Vegetarian Sandwich Recipes.

Unfortunately, not all foods are manufactured equal which makes the job of the dedicated cook more problematic, because it means that the cook has to understand the dietary requirements of humans at all stages of life, which foods can fulfill those needs yet, for normal families, within a finite budget.

Therefore, it is helpful to know the constituents of food – that is, how much water, which vitamins, how much protein, fat and carbohydrate everything holds. If you know these proportions in each foodstuff, you can match them to your family’s needs, and also choose the correct method of preparing the food, because some methods of preparation destroy some of these properties and so should be avoided.

It is possible to cook very successfully for a family without knowing all these details, but knowing them either by having learned from an older relative or by study makes success more assured. Let us take a look at the five most common requirements of all human beings, if not indeed all mammals.

Water is the largest component of human bodies and needs to make up the greatest part of our intake too. We are continuously using up our water content in evaporation, repair, replenishment and cleaning. Luckily, there is also a lot of water in a lot of items that we eat, eg fruit, meat and fish, yet we still have to drink water to keep our fluid levels up. Dehydration kills.

Next in significance is mineral matter – that is vitamins and nutrients. It is not difficult to derive this mineral matter, because plants suck it up from the ground and so, if you eat enough plant life, you should eat enough minerals. By plant life, I mean fruit, vegetables and fungi. Carnivores can get a concentrated mix of plant life by eating meat, however lots of people have given up meat for one reason or another.

Different plant life has a different allotment and concentration of mineral. In general, cooking does not destroy mineral content, but over cooking can result in the mineral leaching out into the water they are boiled in.

Humans require protein to grow and repair themselves so a deficiency of protein is the foremost problem for vegetarians. It is not an insurmountable problem, but it is a worry. Carnivores acquire their protein from meat, fish and dairy. The process of cooking protein makes it more easily digestible for humans; dogs and cats do not have this need.

A great deal is talked about fat, but fat is a vital component of the human diet. A fat-free diet is not healthy for us, but the difficulty is that fat is simple to get, especially from junk food. Carnivores get most of their fat from meat, yet fat is not difficult for vegetarians, because there is fat in almost every sort of food, including nuts and grains.

Carbohydrates have also caused a great deal of controversy (especially with the Atkins Diet), but carbohydrates are also a necessary part of our diet. Again, it is not difficult to pick up all the carbohydrates that we require. Carbohydrates are most prevalent in starches and sugars but there is no doubt that we ought to monitor our consumption of carbohydrates in the same manner that we should with fats.

Owen Jones, the author of this article writes on several subjects, but is currently concerned with French dip sandwich recipes. If you want to know more or check out some great offers, please go to our website at Vegetarian Sandwich Recipes.