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| Stuffed marrow |
The fresh, home grown marrow was given to us by a neighbour, so I was determined to make this rare gift of a genuine fresh vegetable into a healthy meal and not yer regular "school dinner" job, involving minced beef (even though such a retro food classic from the 1930's would have gone down a treat ... especially if it were served with "wartime food" like Smash potato!)
Mother has been pouting again about the lack of meat in the meals I cook. So, I did lapse and eat meat, once or twice a year if I ate out, in Tenerife, but that was because it was locally raised, actually had a flavour and, wasn't full of chemicals. Other than that and always at home, I've eaten 99.9r% vegetarian for at least 2 decades. You'd think she might have noticed by now.
Handling meat can make me physically sick: I can cope with things that don't look like any animal or part of one, like sausages (but equally avoid processed food) and I hadn't eaten meat in the UK for decades before I left, because the chemicals in it cause my symptoms to increase and go haywire.
What kind of person tries to "demand" that a vegetarian serve and eat meals with meat? Or insist that someone with food intolerances eat foods that makes their symptoms worse? It is deliberately cruel, controlling and belligerent.
Anyway, a quick peruse of the internet and I came up with two vegetarian stuffed marrow recipes to use as inspiration (I never follow recipes to the letter); the first from Riverford would have used lentils and another from The Foody that called for rice or beans. Had to use tinned kidney beans, because there wasn't time to soak dry ones, but those were added to onion, three colours of peppers, sliced mushrooms and tomato, all sautéed together, seasoned and served in the baked marrow. Heathy, filling and perfectly adequate without meat.
Ha, I'm not the only person (as she had previously insisted) to have moaned about the general standards of vegetables in the UK (Tesco's are the worst.)
As a comment on this post on Riverford's blog says too, "I spend a lot of time in Italy where vegetables are a source of joy and I was always sad to return home not least because the local supermarket could only offer me highly packaged dull vegetables." Yep, that about sums up how I feel. (Riverford deliver to our postcode, on Thursdays, I discover. No, that would be a step too far!)
On the other hand, mother claims to have overheard a conversation at the vegetable department in Tesco this morning. Their packaged vegetables, frankly, have been a scandal, always wet when you buy them and prone to rotting and going mouldy in just a couple of days. Someone apparently remarked that today they didn't feel wet for once and the other shopper's reply had been that there had been a big complaint about it. Lets hope for improvements.
