When He is a Vegetarian and You Are Not.

 

My occasional other half is a Vegetarian.

He’s not occasionally a vegetarian, he’s always a vegetarian and I am not, and honestly what a faff this causes me in the kitchen. And to be fair, I should have known just by looking at him.  The long hair, the leather bracelets, the truck adorned with buzzard feathers, the age difference!

The alarm bells should have rung and said, ‘You are NOT going to be eating Chateaubriand with this one, stop, look, and listen to your cooking skills.  Yes whilst I’ve occasionally lunched AT the Ritz, the nearest he’s got is lunching ON some Ritz – crackers.

But when cupid knocks for you to come out to play, it would be churlish to refuse, and despite us looking like the odd couple, it kind of works.

I’d like to say ‘he was working as a waiter in a cocktail bar‘ when I met him, but he wouldn’t have got past security, so the truth of the matter is I actually met him at a car boot sale.

There I was selling my designer cast off’s, and there he was selling well, just cast-offs! But a weird connection was made and through a mutual love of music and dogs, with a very large sprinkle of humour over our inability to ‘conform’, and DESPITE a heavy shower of adversity we’ve managed to stick together.  Occasionally!

He comes, he goes, but on a fairly regular basis and the relationship suits us both, neither of us wants to be fenced in, but neither of us wants to be with anyone else.  Weird?  yes completely.

But him being a fully paid-up member of the Vegetarian Club is a right old hassle for me, I’m not going to lie. Call me old fashioned, but I feel a meal is incomplete without meat, real meat, not some tasteless protein substitute masquerading as meat.

I want Chicken with my roast dinner, I want Steak with my chips, I want Lamb in my Mousakka, and Minced Beef at the bottom of my Cottage Pie, and today I want real Sausages in my legendary Sausage Casserole.  But my ‘occasional bloke’ doesn’t, and to coin a well-worn phrase, I just can’t get my head around it. It’s worse than one person being on a diet, and the other person trying to put weight on.   Meal preparations are like his and hers, or more like hers and oh FFS…. HIS!

Today I had 3 meat-filled sausages to use up, and as I knew I had a busy afternoon, I wanted to get all ahead of myself and made a Sausage Casserole.  BUT it didn’t end there, as I also had to make a meat-free version of a Sausage Casserole for himself.

So cue a special trip to buy meat-free Sausages, ( which in my book doesn’t make them sausages at all ) which added to the cost of my ‘using stuff up’ meal,  then two different trays to actually cook the Sausages, then two different saucepans to make the casserole in, plus one chicken stock pot cube, and one vegetable stock pot cube.  Not to mention the stress of remembering which pot is which. And correct me if I’m wrong, but the  Vegetarian Sausages look the same after 30 minutes at 190 degrees, as they did when they were raw!

Before they are cooked.

 

Oh my days, sometimes I wonder if he’d know the difference if I got it all muddled up anyway, but to avoid a guilty conscience I do my best.

Vegetarian Sausage Stew

The Veggie Option.

So, double the washing up later, two pots of Sausage Casserole are ready, hers and his. But in my mind whilst I totally get it’s a moral decision made by meat-free eaters, I do sometimes wonder why.

If it’s a protest against eating living/dead animals, then why do so many of them still eat fish.  It would take a heck of a lot of Vegetarians to rid the world of breeding animals for food.   To me, in the simplest of terms, it’s like one person making a stand, and going to gaol for NOT paying their Council Tax, hoping that their solitary refusal to pay, will somehow mean that Council Tax is abolished for everyone  Never going to happen.

 

Meanwhile across the world, there are people like me, preparing the same meal, in two different ways, or trying to make a thick slice of Turmeric coated, grilled cauliflower, enhance a roast dinner the same way a thick slice of roast beef does.

And let’s be honest, a 3 bean chilli will never, ever taste as good as an unctuous, spicy hot, ground beef one, and…. ‘ Vegetarian Tofu Chow Mein is tastier than a Chicken Chow Mein’ said nobody ever.

And which looks better now they are both cooked.

 

 

Full on Sausage Casserole

Don’t get me wrong, I’m respectful of anyone’s choices, but to all you Vegetarian’s out there, do spare a thought for the cook at mealtimes.

For most of us, it’s hard enough throwing together one vaguely edible meal, but two variations of the same meal can be a saucepan too far!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Uninterested Man in The Flasher Mac

As we all enter a new decade, it’s a great time to clear out not only the clutter from your home, but also to say a permanent ‘See you later’ to those dead end relationships that only make you huff and puff and question your own sanity.

Why, I thought to myself, are you still friends with any man who doesn’t leave you smiling, or who has no positive effect on you whatsoever. So now in 2020 I’m taking steps to end those toxic relationships that drain the life out of you, and this one was the first to go.

After another ‘you couldn’t make it up’ lunch with this gentleman acquaintance, I took the easy decision of blocking him from my phone and ending all points of contact.  Sounds harsh, but here’s why…..

I’ve known, (let’s call him) Jim – surprisingly not his real name, – around 10 years.  Quite an attractive man, tall, carries himself well, and wouldn’t look out of place in an East End car lot.

In a different life, he might have been a would be member of a Kray type mob.  Back in the day that is.

An ex publican, plenty of chat, with a mouth that makes appointments for ‘mature man’ fisticuffs, that his body wouldn’t ever actually be able to keep.

But nevertheless, we shared a passion for red wine, warm climates, and long discussions about deciding what to do in our retirement.

But unfortunately for ‘Jim’, over the years, at times he’s not been a very nice friend, and whilst I’ve given him several second chances, this time, there was no point.

The last time I even spoke to ‘Jim’ was in 2015.  He had promised to collect some furniture for me, and I was relying  on him to deliver it to a new place I was renting.

As you can imagine, the actual moving part of all this was stressful enough, but to have him let me down quite spectacularly at the very last minute, tipped me over the edge.

I didn’t contact him again, or return any of his calls or texts.   Until December 2019.

Out of the blue he text to ask how I was, and that he’d like to buy me lunch to catch up.  And being the nosey bird that I am, I DID want to know what life had thrown at him during the 4 silent years. But nothing more than that. So I accepted the invite.

Lunch was arranged for 1.30.  My heart sank at his choice of venue, a fast food pub, but I didn’t intend to stay there too long. Quick drink, quick lunch, quick catch up, done. Maybe for another 4 years!

‘Jim’ arrived in the car park at the same time as me.  A vision approached me, in a long gold coloured Colombo style (flasher) Mac and hugs were exchanged.  I grabbed a table, he went to the bar to order drinks.  So far, so good.

Inside of a pub

But, it went downhill from there.  Without even exchanging pleasantries, my lunch date ceremoniously plonked 2 G & T’s on the table and launched into a mega speech, which should have come with a warning.

The opening statement was ‘well, I’ve been thinking,… we aren’t getting any younger, and what I think we should do is………’ it was as if I’d only seen him the day before, not 4 YEARS before!

For all he knew, I could have met the love of my life, and got married.  Unlikely, but he didn’t even wait to find out if I’d even had any meaningful relationships in all this time.

The diatribe continued for many minutes, with him telling me how we should pool our resources, and go off to Spain together and run a bar.

Oh and if it had rooms above it,  I could maybe run an Airbnb. ( as I’m already an Airbnb Superhost, this was the most sensible part of his suggestion).  He had it all worked out, and I really couldn’t get a word in edgeways.  He was on a roll.

Within all this, we had ordered some ‘fast’ food. As I’d looked at the menu, I’d mentally made a note of what he would order, and I wasn’t wrong, the cheapest item, as always.

As an ex publican, he knows exactly where the food has been bought from, and his choice is dictated not by what he likes, or fancy’s, but what HE is paying for it, simply because he knows what the pub has paid for it. But he thinks I don’t know this!

I listened patiently, he didn’t pause for breath, whilst he put a price on all the belongings he would sell, and instructed me to start saving, so we could make our escape.   At last he stopped, and threw an uninterested ‘ So how have you been…..’ in my direction.  Ah, I thought, my turn to talk, your turn to listen.

With that, ”Jim’ turned and took his mobile phone out of his Flasher Mac pocket, and proceeded to scroll through it, as only uninterested people do, and became completely engrossed, occasionally glancing my way and giving me a cursory, ‘Yeah, I’m listening’……..actually mate, you definitely are not.  

It was the most bizarre lunch date I’ve endured in a long time, and trust me, I’ve endured quite a few.  A man who was nothing more than an occasional ‘friend’, who I hadn’t seen, or spoken to for 4 years, sat in front of me virtually dictating what WE should do, without pausing for breath.  No niceties, no catch up, no verbal foreplay, just straight in wham bam……..but actually, NO THANK YOU MAN!

How arrogant, how presumptuous, how rude and completely oblivious to what he was doing.

Normally, I’d linger over a coffee, enjoy the chat, and be interested in what someone had been up to in the 4 years since I’d last spoken to them. But once I could see that this was just a load of self centred clap trap, I made my excuses, thanked him for a lovely ( it was not) meal, and left.

To give you some idea of how quickly I made my own escape, I arrived at the pub at 1.30pm, I was back home with a cup of tea at 3.00, and 15 minutes of that was journey time!

Quite some ‘speed date’ then…..!