lets start by talking about a typical day for me in terms of the foods i would eat.
Breakfast: Scrambled eggs on a toasted English muffin topped with sautéed portabella mushrooms and sprinkled with fresh chives.
Lunch: Vegetable biryani served with cucumber ratia .
Dinner: Black chickpea curry served with roti, salad and mango pickle
Recipe for Open Faced Breakfast Sandwich
Ingredients:
2 large eggs
20 g sliced mushrooms of your choice
1 english muffin
15 ml 2%milk
25 g unsalted butter
3 sprigs of chives
salt and pepper to taste
Method:
1. In a small sauté pan melt 10 g of butter and add in sliced mushrooms, cook on medium heat until mushrooms have released most of their moisture and reserve
2. in the same pan add remaining butter and add in the eggs that have been beaten lightly with the milk. Add salt and pepper,stir constantly until you have reached your preferred doneness
3. Toast english muffin and top with eggs, mushrooms and freshly sliced chives.
Next let me tell you about my daily experiances throughout the week.
Day 1: Today was the day I started my lacto-ovo vegetarian diet. The only other experience I have had with a diet that resembles this is a lacto vegetarian diet I did for a couple of month in 2013, at that time it was very hard for me health wise so my doctor recommended I go back to my regular diet. I started my day with some cereal and milk and a cup of coffee, I had cucumber sushi for lunch witch was extremely unsatisfying and just left me craving real sushi. For dinner I had sagg (Indian spinach dish) and some roties.
Day 2: My friends and I decided to go out to a pub since it was half off wings, at my favourite wing place. I had an order of onion rings and was kind of sad that I couldn't have any wings. My friends weren't very supportive and kept taunting me the whole time we were there.
Day 3: I had a really satisfying breakfast sandwich witch had eggs and mushrooms in it, it was really yummy. I found myself thinking alot about what I could eat that would leave me not wanting more. I got my dad to cook me up some vegetarian briyani with cucumber ratia, it was good but could have used some chicken.
Day 4: Just had coffee in the morning. All day i was craving a bacon poutine, sadly I have 3 more days of this. For dinner I had dall (lentil soup) with steamed rice
Day 5: I had to taste my food in lab (chicken liver parfait) so i think I've broken the rules of the diet but I'm going to continue to follow it to the best of my ability.
Day 6: I had a super fresh croissant from the local cafe and it made me really happy and gave me hope for this diet. I tried to get vegetarian sushi again this time but opted for the yam this time... it was somehow worse than the cucumber roll. For dinner I had an Indian squash dish called tinda sabzi with roti and yoghurt, it was really spicy so I didn't eat to much of it.
Day 7: Being the last day I thought it would be a good idea to make something that I've never tried. I made fresh pasta with a mushroom and leek cream sauce. This is a recipe from Gordon Ramsay's YouTube channel and it turned out okay, it was lacking in flavour I think.
Final Thoughts: It was really hard. I was thinking of meat the whole week and was just daydreaming about what I would eat the second it was over. I also started thinking about people who don't have the luxury of eating meat whenever they please. Even though I'm of Indian decent and a lot of Indians are vegetarians I don't ever think that I could be a vegetarian for more than a couple of days at a time. I think for a chef to be a vegetarian would be difficult considering that they would have no choice but to taste the food there making
, for a chef to be able to do this would have to work in a vegetarian restaurant in my opinion. I think I could follow this diet but first I would have to gradually eat less meat rather than going cold turkey.
