Haiku Friday

fermenting away,
pots of lovely cucumbers
sliced and whole. Dill added.

Haiku Friday

The lengths we go to!
I crossed Europe for Stohrer,
and Oz for Zumbo 

Haiku Friday

A festival of cheeses;

friends, wine and provenance told.

Heavenly table.

Thanks for the pic Carole

Christmas menu planning

One of my most favourite meal times is Christmas. I love everything about the preparation; the reading of blogs, magazines and recipe books to find something that suits my fancy for the day and the dedication of a day or two to preparation and shopping. I like cooking anyway but it always feels much more special, probably due to the more extraordinary ingredients or volume involved.

My family have never done the roast and veg at Christmas lunch. My mum was a vegetarian when I was growing up  and so we had our own version of the roast; her marvelous Nut Loaf with Pimiento Sauce. Its stuffed with sage and onion and has a fantastic texture. To be found in the womens weekly vego cookbook.  It's now an institution as we all love it. So Christmas is always a nut loaf or two (coz we all like leftovers) and a bonanza of seafood, fish and fresh salads.

But this year I'm thinking of contributing a gingerbread spice glazed local happy ham with fresh cherry relish (coz we had a stupendous one at our wedding and I haven't had any since!), a baked ricotta with a sticky tomato balsamic glaze, spinach, persian feta and roast almond salad with a mango chutney dressing and mince tart ice-cream with brandy snap and a load of fresh raspberries. And bubbles.
Christmas Eve, I plan on eating macarons.

What are you all planning for Christmas lunch?

Haiku Friday

Sheltered in the barn,
we listen and wait as wind's
bite, our bellies full.

gratin fever

Wow. its been a while. So long in fact that I had to think twice about how to log in. Despite the election being over and the Bloke missing out on a MLC seat (not unexpected) and the launch of Food Connect going well, life hasn't returned to the simple that I thought it would. We've had birthdays, office moves, Easter, LOTS of data management now that Food Connect has totally taken off, garden prep and a huge amount tidying up the months of neglect around the place (the downside to 2 acres..)and the winter veges in..

But I have been cooking. Forced to in some cases. The great benefit of working with Food Connect Adelaide has been the left over produce that occasionally comes your way! What to do with kilos of 'too ripe to send out' organic bananas? Banana bread! loaves and loaves. Ive been tossing this stuff around a bit too lately and the banana bread copped its fair share. Heaven in a small pot this stuff is. vanilla bean paste. Highly concentrated heaven.
This monstrosity got made for b2's birthday party the scary thing is I had the same cake when I was her age! appeased my conscience with some natural food colouring in the icing!

I have been busy with loads of fantastic meals made with our vege box contents. It really is a pleasure to get each week, knowing that its 100% organic, 100% local, and its all been picked in the last day or two and ..and..you dont have to scout around for it all. Its all there in a box! The freshness and quality really is something else.

Its been great to have boundaries around food choices too. Box contents determines what we have each week. It really forces the local and seasonal. I must admit to having discovered a very deep relatinship with the gratin , gratin anything! Now, I grow chard in the garden and I get it in the box. Wasting garden chard was never an issue in the past, i picked it when i wanted to use some on pizza or to make a spanokopita and just let the plants grow and go to seed, but i have never used it as a vegetable on its own. I thought i really hated the stuff - too metalic in taste. So when we started getting big bunches in the box i was forced to use it. Remembering my fantastic experience with the zucchinis', I gratinised ?? the chard and now I am fully addicted and a bit miffed that the stuff growing in the garden isnt producing enough!
Seriously, if you've never eaten it, try it, its heavenly. But, like all good things to eat around here for dinner, they get eaten before I take a pic which is why you have a hot cross bun as a leader pic for a gratin appreciation post!

extra special sourdough pancakes

I love sourdough anything and these pancakes were no exception. Slightly tangy and ohh so light and full of nutty goodness and like all good pancakes, they have story. The sourdough starter I used has a lovely history.

Its come all the way from a bakery in Anchorage, Alaska, shipped over dried from a friend to a friend, who then travelled from Tassie to Melbourne with it in a little bottle to handover at our girly weekend. It's over 100 years old. Hows that for a pancake with provenance? The starter has been fed and divided and this mix uses the starter excess that would normally be tossed away.

As always, I didnt really measure anything, just dumped some local organic flour in with about a cup of starter, some milk, an egg and a sprinkle of sugar and mixed until it seemed like good pancake batter consistency. I ignored the weevil that fell on the counter top, telling myself a) it was the only one and b) if it wasnt..i eat worse things like a big chunk of dead cow and dead chicken and stuff like that.

I decided that a pancake with such lineage and extra protein needed a special light something to go with it so I cooked up some handy freezer stored organic, 'handplucked by moi' blackberries and redcurrants in a pan with a little sugar to make a 'Chez Pan coulis' (I just made that up for sure!)
Verdict: EXTRA good.

a *#ducking revelation

Thank you Nigella! Domestic Goddess of Easy Streets entertaining. Having removed the last spare duck from its frozen home on Thursday to defrost in the fridge (i needed the space) with a grand plan of cooking it for Saturday nights' post-conference dinner. Home at 3pm with the bean, 7 people due at half six, gear to unload and chaos to clear I was left with no choice but to commit to the damn thing.! fuck fuck fuck! With tales of hairdryers and half cooked ducks, hours of roasting, dried out flesh and burnt skin shadowing my memory bank, I wasnt feeling very confident. In a manner quite unlike me, I really hadnt prepared what we were going to eat, I just knew it was 'had to involve a duck. I had vegos and allergies to cater to and wasnt sure of the full extent of allergies until the day so I figured Id just have to wing it as best as I could without killing the guests. Besides, I had no other main!

So, at half four, duck in front of me and no time to re-commit or dither nor do anything fancy (ie: involving any preparation- i didnt even remove the neck! eek!) and with a kid meal and bath to fit in somewhere and allergies of the soy, lactose and wheat variety (no pasta, no asian, no cheese), i was definitely going to have to let the basics of the meal speak for themselves. I pulled her off the shelf. Nigella. Domestic Goddess of the need-to-channel-a-bit-of-that-right-now, kind. I resolved that unless it involved a mars bar, some marshmallows and a bottle of Coke, whatever I found in there, I was doing exactly what she told me. She told me to boil the duck in a big bath of water. So I did. She told me to remove it after a while and to feel free to leave it hanging around cold until forty minutes before dinner. So I did. She told me to roast the bird for half an hour in very high heat. So I did. It was freakin excellent! Crispy and moist and completely unadorned, besides salt n pepper, it was delicious. New motto - No duck too big or too small! Boil n bake.

True to style at some point of the routine however, the next day I did add some carrot, celery and onion to the duck bath, reintroduced the refridgerated carcass and uneaten bum n neck, bay and seasonings, boiled the bathwater down further, strained and fridge set. et viola. Rendered duck fat and 4 litres of stock.

10 things i really hate about being green- the food edition

{insert sad face picture here}

I had salad for dinner and um, I cant even recall lunch, so I admit to feeling quite hungry. I was fantasising about some delectables to eat and started dreaming of food and realised that most of the things I was salivating about are óff the list'. Contraband, not even just plain banned. Sheesh. Sometimes it sucks, especially when you see everyone else just blithely consuming, discounting, figuring that they only eat a little bit so it really doesnt count (i do realise that I am assuming that people are not doing it as a one-off, an educated moment, an exceptional event and am myself blithely assuming that people are generally doing the norm'' when they're out there consuming) So here's my top 10 , fuck I miss them, ethicurean-ism sucks list to compliment my previous 10 things list.

1. Prawns. Garlic prawns, Thai curry prawns, BBQ prawns, marinated prawns, Indian curry prawns, King prawns...any prawns'! Major over farmed problems with prawns.

2. Lobster. Lobster thermidore, lobster with homemade lime mayonaise, American lobster ala Julia Child...any lobster!. Ditto the prawn problem.

3. French cheeses. Sloppy stinky brie, teensy weesy hand rolled ashed cheesies, Boursin. Major bourjeoise food mile issues when we have plentygood local cheese, just not quite...

4. Çanned tomatoes. Any idea how hard it is to find a can of tomatoes that is made from local ingredients. Have a LOOK next time.

5. San Pellegrino- expensive and rather bad for you carbonated sugared drink all the way from Italy- i love the blood orange fizzy stuff. Sigh

6. Salmon... Its densely farmed...full of shit...loads of antibiotics, really, you wouldn't/shouldn't want to touch it with a bargepole... but god its good.

7. Lindt chocolate balls. No fair trade.

8. Coopers Pale Ale. GM yeast! Did ya know that??

9. Tuna. Sashimi, sushi, pasta, with salad, so easy. You KNOW its over farmed right?

10. Tommy Ruffs- bottom of the fish food chain and acceptable re. sustainability but so BLOODY expensive!

There ya have it. The food whinge at Chez Pan. You?

maîtriser l'art de la cuisine française

Not to be behind the 8-ball or anything, but I finally got around to making a French meal in this post Julie & Julia world. I really love French food and the meal I cooked last night was so simple, used minimal pans (just 3!!!) which I always thinks adds to the excellence of a meal, and so bloody tasty that I wondered why i dont cook French food more often, then I remember just how much butter I really used. About a normal 2 weeks worth. Maybe its a telling sign, the last hoorah on my butter love, maybe Im about to give it up? Nah, prolly not. But this meal was glorious.

If you've never used Mastering the Art of French Cooking by Julia Child et.al, then you're probably wondering what all the fuss was about, but the book(s) really is(are) a revelation. She makes the art of French cookery easy and essentially understable; it's more like a conversation and a step-by-step guide through a recipe. The text guides you what to do with the dish if you want to cook it ahead. They leave nothing to chance in your own distorted thinking. If you need it spelt out, this book is for you (and me).

Im usually in the cooking camp of chuck in whatever you've got, improvise and adapt to suit. And it usually works. But last night I decided to follow the recipes to a T ( yes , I basted that damn chicken every 5 minutes, yes I added butter and oil to the basting tray, yes I rubbed salt on the bird in the last 30 and then the last 15). I reckon it made all the difference. The poulet roti was the best I'd ever produced. Dont tell anyone but I added the three lonely swiss browns mushrooms in the fridge to the baking tray along with the requisite onion and carrot and minced spring onion(thats the big brown blob you can see on the chicken).

Then there was the accompanying carrottes glacees (next time I'd put in just a fraction of the sugar - it was a stretch for me to add sugar to a vegetable I must say) and as for boiling fresh carrot in beef stock and butter...yum! The gratin dauphinois; superb, but as I was using up the weekly stocks I used regular tasty cheese, not the swiss style as called for, and I reckon the difference would have been phenomenal. Next time.

I would have made a zucchini dish but the glut I was expecting, well, it wasn't . Damn bees arent doing their job and the five i thought would be ready to go had started to shrivel, so not enough for dinner. Im going to have to go out and hand pollinate again this morning. However, for all you suffering a courgette glut, in the coming week/s Im going to do a series on zucchini ala cuisine française, coz they look sublime. courgettes farcies aux amandes (stuffed with almonds and cheese) , timbale de courgettes (molded custard of zucchin with onions and cheese)...I think I may be on the butter for a few weeks yet, there's a duck in the freezer...

tallow, oh my! what have i done?

*spoiler alert *warning* gross pics to follow
Seriously, I had an excess of fat, lots of beef fat. Ick. It makes me realise why I usually hate cooking meat. All that grease. Our carbon footprint at Chez Pan has been getting a bit more of a meat driven workout; the meat we have just started to buy is high quality and incredibly cost effective and can keep in the freezer for ages if vacuum packed. Our stsh has been eaten at a rather rapid rate - it must be all that meat deprivation thats been going on for quite a while in this normally vego household! It has to stop soon. She says drooling at the memory of a parmigiana.

Anyway, after another delivery of a fabulous beef rump by the Gnomes, I trimmed and portioned into into various cuts leaving me with a great pile of beef fat. Last time I did this the Gnomes were here and took the fat home for their chooks. This time no Gnomes. What to do with all that fat?

Compost it? nup

Feed it to the cat? nup

Bin it? ugh nup

So I bit the bullet and made some tallow. I just couldnt toss it. Tallow! Yikes. So I chopped it into small pieces, put it into a pan, covered with water and boiled it for about 30 minutes. Gross. Needin a shower right about now.Boiled meat stinks, the worst smell in the world I reckon and our kitchen fan is busted too! Double ick. I scooped out all the chunky, browned bits then i forgot to strain it and left it in the fridge to set hard.
When set, I cut the hard disk of fat in half and removed it from the pan. Underneath the layer of set tallow was a clear gelatinious layer and underneath that a layer or purplish sludge. dont ask! I washed the tallow under running water, rubbing off gently the jelly and the tiny fat balls and impurities that were on the undersides of the pieces.
I will probably ues it for some soap, beef tallow makes lovely big bubbled soap or some candles. What do you think? What to do with the leftover, very unappetising gristly,fatty meaty bits? Ive put them in the freezer to whizz up with bird seed to keep the native finches with a supply of fat which they find tricky to source mid-winter. Not my most favourite way to spend an afternoon but hey, that cow and its bits need some respecting right?

loving earth on toast

I don't buy many processed foods and if I do its certainly not on a regular occasion. Canned/bottled/wrapped goods tends to be 'unmake-able' sauces/condiments like mushroom sauce/oyster sauce (the organic stuff! not the chemical goop from China) , canned coconut milk and tomatoes and beans, cellophane/glass noodles and sometimes tofu. Processed breakfast food is something not found here at Chez Pan. Its bulk muesli or porridge for cereal, smoothies or fruit salad. Alternatively a lazy breakfast is sourdough toast with local honey, fresh pressed cashew or peanut butter, local or home-made jam/marmalade, weekends can be tomato and basil or eggs with my home made chorizo sausage. The only processed spread we buy is Promite (like Vegemite but not as salty); full of sugar and salt and un-guaranteed GE free, but an addiction which goes with my butter. I keep meaning to buy some Aussie Mite ( made here in the Adelaide Hills!) but I suspect its made for the Vegemite lovers, and I loathe Vegemite so I haven't got around to buying a jar as no-one else here likes it either.

So I got sucked in by the packaging of the raw chocolate coconut butter! Earthy and wholesome. I was in the mood for splurging and I had a houseful of kids sleeping over and wanted to try a kid friendly but 'not all the way from Canada' alternative to maple syrup. It's a bit like eating a chocolate crackle with your toast - disconcerting but not too awful. Raw cocoa, fairly traded, single origin, sweetened with agave and certified organic. Its a product of Oz (Vic) but probably not Australian sourced raw ingredients. Fat content 4.0/100g and sugar 2.0/100g so pretty reasonable. Buying fruit and veg and nuts and cheese is as exciting as our weekly shop tends to be, this added a moment of sweetness.

officially *%#@! knackered.

so go check this out if you're interested in how bloggers get their food looking so good,
and this for a bit of lovely food with an Spanish illustrators twist (thanks Robert)
and this for the worst possible new food craze to sweep the planet , for soo many reasons.
Have a good weekend.

(PS. So @#&$! knackered I forgot it was Haiku Friday! B2 reminded me...minyana)

OMG dill pickle!

Dunno about you, but for some reason I love a dill pickle. Trashy little numbers they are, the cheap, flirty end of the burger. Kind of like the bad end of town. B2 came home from four days at camp. She's a fermented, salty, weird-food loving kinda girl , besides the dead animal weird. I knew she'd love the idea of a huge earthernware crock full of pickle which I'd made while she was away. "Check these out". Wow, four days after being submerged in their spiced, vinegared brine they tasted awesome; crisp and crunchy with the dill and garlic already shining through and already they are that weird pickle colour. God knows what they'll be like in four weeks! Not a bad way to treat a cucumber. Welcome back Lily.

what does your week taste like?

Limes and Lycopene has an interesting post today which got me thinking. What does a week or two look like on the food front at Chez Pan? Thinking back over 7 days, what have we eaten...
Let me start with tonight and work my way back a week:

:: homegrown salad with tuna and local goat feta , herbs and a balsamic glaze .
:: biodynamic beef burgers on Brezel rolls with homemade tomato relish, homegrown salad and dijon (looking forward to my dill pickles being ready)
:: homemade tortilla with yoghurt-jalapeno guacamole, salad and organic grated cheese
:: locally made spinach ravioli with simple organic tomato sauce
:: herby stuffed mushrooms with salad.
:: homemade pizza with roasted pumpkin, garden greens, local olives and australian feta
:: local lamb chops / vege burger with homemade mint sauce and potato caper salad

So, according to Limes and Lycopene, Ive done the pasta, pizza and meat 'n' veg. How about you? I have to say Im pretty happy with that weeks meal offerings, more meat than I thought we'd had but B2 the vego has been away for 4 days on camp...which has been a complete bummer on the blogging pics front as I use her camera! I tried to tell her she couldnt take it...but then i felt really mean..like not a good mother to let her kid take her own stuff.
What has your week tasted like? Im gunning for some ideas!

fantastic edible foods database

this site Plants for a Future - edible, medicinal and useful plants for a healthier world is an absoloute treasure trove of information. An incredibly user friendly and yet incredibly comprehenisve site. Add it to your lists. Its a great reference for foraging foods in your own garden and your neighbourhood. Seriously, really, go have a look, type in a plant and viola; its edibility rating, how its consumed, its other uses, its preferred environmental conditions. Its a gem. really. truly.

An inspirational Sunday in the church of food

Last Sundays FoodConnect workshop in Adelaide was fantastic, The Mad Gnomes kindly picked me up on the way. My tired brain may not do it justice but I'll give you some emotions and basic reflections that are sitting pretty close to the surface. The afternoon was;

:: informative. It clarified what the non-profit CSA organisation is all about and how we, the consumer and interested and supportive city based community can help to get it up and running. It also re-defined the concept of 'producer'/farmer as besides playing trade with commercial producers, FoodConnect will also take your home grown glut and pay for it, you just need to call them and let them know! No producer to small. Incredible. Connecting. Obvious. Fantstic. Cost comparisons were also given, the takehome message being that prices fluctuate but on average you pay 20% less to equivalent to supermarket prices!! Irresistable huh? The deals provided for farmers outstanding, fair and just. I saw one dairy farmer gasp! New business/economic models in action.

:: community building. I can't tell you how exciting it was to be amongst a group of farmers who also want to step out of the modern food production and distribution system and to sit with other dedicated consumers/supporters of such change. I seriously wanted to jump up at one point, tears flowing and say thank you to everyone for caring about this and for DOING something about it and WHAT MORE CAN I DO TO HELP IT SUCCEED ?( no, Im not premenstrual nor pregnant and I hadnt 'had a few' either) Weird. Meet the farmer trips are planned periodically for 'city cousins' and consumers. Feedback is that everyone involved LOVES these.

:: expansive. I must confess to being worried that a SA based system like this may have found its environmental climate a bit tough for the restricions on producers placed by the FoodConnect boundaries for producers (loca rules). Not to worry. The bounty the farmers had listed ( 60-80% anticipated organic) was extensive and went beyond my wildest dreams. A cornucopia of fabulousnes in a fruit, veg and dairy box; a foodies dream. Those CSA boxes are shaping up to put home gardening out of business.


:: clarifying. the role of the 'city cousin' was defined. City cousins form the drop of point for regional/local distribution (essentially making them 'the loca shop' without any cash changing hands) where customers can pick up their boxes at a designated time and day. Involvement in socialising optional (you dont even have to be home) but for me this is an exciting part of being a 'city cousin' is the networks and community building it offers with likeminded local people. 'City cousins' also get good discounts on produce, so if you need an incentive, this may be it. 15-20 customers per cousin seemed about the norm. Very managable in terms of storing boxes and traffic. If you're interested in being a 'city cousin' its not to late. Check out the Food Connect Adelaide website and fill in an expression of interest form.

:: Food Connect Adelaide is anticipated to launch in the early new year of 2010. The Adelaide group are inspiring and have done an incredible job. Im very appreciative we have people like this around.

Get involved. Food Connect Adelaide needs people like you and me to help it succeed!

making black tea from your camellia japonica

Camellia sinensis is the common 'tea' camellia but we dont have any of those, we have japonica and sasanquas. Why cant these be used to make tea? What is it that makes its cousin sinensis the favoured leaf? Lots of searching around the web was not very forthcoming but Mansfields Encyclopedia of Agrcultural and Horticultural Crops offerered the few words i had been wanting to read... camellia japonica can be used as a tea substitute (and tobacco)! We couldn't really undersand why japonicas and sasanquas werent used for tea making and the literature is not full of loud warnings to avoid them due to being harmful nor why sinensis had been the favoured tea choice. So we concluded that sinesis was favoured as a tea crop as it is a more prolific bearer of tips during season and puts its energy into leaves and not pretty flower production. We did find information on tea seed oil or Camelia seed oil made from Japonica. Apparently in China and Japan it has many common uses; frying, salads, dipping sauce, and it has a high smoke point and a sweet flavor. Dried camellia flowers are also be used as a vegetable. Hmmmm, trying to think of a tasty how? Interesting.

Camellia shrubs are everywhere here in the Adelaide hills where the regional climate provides perfect camellia growing conditions; slighty acidic soil and cooler air temperatures. Urban foraging for your own tea leaves is a very viable idea, particularly as they rarely get sprayed for pest and disease control.

A 'spear and two flags' is how you tip prune a camellia for tea; three leaves a pinch. Our twenty rather well 'Sprung' Camellia bushes provided two bowls of prunings, but over time with more tip pruning it will produce more tips more frequently, also catching the spring flush of new growth may have helped as most had opened and grown.
It was a beautiful feeling to finger prune the tips, they were snappy and waxy and fresh between the fingers. After we'd collected what was available we sat and rubbed the leaves in our palms.
They crumbled surprisingly easily despite being so fresh and each batch required about three rubbings to generate a leaf matter the size required.
At this point we lay the crumbled leaf on a tray and removed the stems.

We left the crumbled leaves for 2 days in a dark cool spot to dry; the pantry and could have done three and tossed them around periodically. This proces of air drying essentially oxoidises the leaves and begins a fermentation The leaf bits turned brown and looked rather awful which is what is supposed to happen.

We then oven dried the fermented matter for about 20 minutes in a low oven.
Then we had a cup of tea.
The verdict? A little shallow in flavour but aromatic and it smells just like black tea! Low tanin. Whoopee! We think maybe a little longer to ferment, an extra day and a little more roasting may bring out some more flavour but we will certainly be experimenting with home grown organic japonica tea to keep us in our habit. Depth of flavour may be why sinensis is the tea choice but some further experimentation with ferment and drying times will tell us for sure. Two big bowls of fresh leaves made about a half a cup of dried leaves! Cheaper to use the japonicas than buying enough sinensis to meet our needs and waiting thet 3 year growing period! Im amazed at how cheap bought tea is! and now I understand 'hand rubbed' as a feature of swanky tea.

***morning after update: We reckon this tea is pretty high in caffeine content and its relaxant properties as we felt very chilled but couldnt sleep. A day brew only perhaps.

Haiku Friday

my kitchen spaces
packed with tools, herbs and spices
creative places

remembering the happy meat

Its taken a while to eliminate a lot of my old habits but I have noticed over the last 6 months or so that my unconscious brain has moved over into accepting full happy meat consciousness. I now remember to search out the vegetarian dishes when Im dining out; no proscuittto on my pizzas, no chicken in my past sauce, no prawns, not a lot of fish. Its taken a while to accept this as I am definitely a meat lover by nature but i just cant do it anymore. Not from a happy meat point of view or a human population health point of view. Its happy meat or its the vegetarian option. Actually if I was a vegetarian it would have been alot easier to remember; the full monty would be with you always. So i have found that the trick is to pick the right place for anticipated failure. Japanese is good, so is Italian and Indian, well Thai too. All the eating out vegetarian options are really tasty if they dont do happy meals. As a meat eater, doing veg when Im out has been very very difficult but its really just taken a shift in how i think about it. No longer do i go 'nooo' carbonara is what i want! i reframe from 'Im missing out' to 'i can do this', be Big and do the right thing and retrain my brain to think it can all be delicious without the meat. Anchovies have been known to save me from despair!

As I have become more diliget about it, the BBQ chicken pizza loving B1 has been known to object, not taking to it to well (especially when olives are present to ruin the WHOLE thing) but she is coping and she understands the reasons. It sounds fanatical , I cant quite believe Im 'one of them', Im usually all for putting the stomach first but Im finding that harder and harder to do as my knowledge has increased over the years. Ive been good for a long time on buying happy meat for home consumption but eating out has always been my downfall. So what's next for me is to start asking if the chicken/pork is free range or if there is a free range option when Im out. I have resisted this tactic as i know damn well its not, but its like the whole smoking in public places thing. If people didnt start asking to sit in non-smoking sections in restaurants, societies attitudes would have taken a lot longer to change. You have to market the idea, one individual at a time and at all points of sale, not just the butcher. Remember life before real vegetarian options? A pineapple ring, a half a canned peach and some ricotta cheese set in the abyss. That used to be the veetarian dining out alternative. It had to start somewhere. Self as one-woman happy meat consciousness raising and marketing campaign.
Sigh. Then there's the unhappy cheese on the pizza...no wonder we dont eat out often!

I came across this blog postyesterday, its easy to read and informative so I thought a cross post would be simplest( my brain is otherwise occupied). or you can cut straight to the Farmacology article here. Anyone out there still eating intensively farmed meat? Thinking about switiching? Why? Why not?