A vegetarian lunch

If you’ve been here before, you’ve seen all kinds of meats: from burgers to organ dishes, from raw meat to great oven roasts. What I’ve never told you is that my man and I (try to) do a whole vegetarian month every year, usually around May (well, kinda vegetarian, as we still eat fish and seafood). My man’s idea, but I felt OK to accept this challenge. Last year we had an amazing month: I cooked veggie curries, tagines, various pasta and a whole array of salads. Inspiration just spoke to me. This year, however, total fail. We didn’t take it too much to heart, because we don’t really care and we look at this yearly project as a fun experiment (even though some of us maintain a raised eyebrow for the entire month…that’s me, ofc). Anyway, this was the high-peak of the shortly-abandoned veggie month: chickpea & white beans meatballs with turmeric. I just made them like any normal meatballs with all the ingredients: one egg, grated carrot, chopped onion, grated garlic and finely chopped parsley. I also added some flax seeds & soaked psyllium seeds, which give a nice texture. Salt, pepper, turmeric. I always cook meatballs on the grill and never-ever fry them, so that’s what I did. In the evening we ate them with a big salad and a blue cheese dressing. Almost the same for lunch: a colorful salad and a piece of Romanian maturated cheese. Satisfying and energy-giving is the verdict.

Will I do the veggie-month again? Sure, I’ll give it a try, because I think it’s a nice challenge. I need to be more creative, to dig out new recipes, to learn new cooking techniques. Anyway, my experience so far has been interesting and I learned a thing or two. The most important when cooking vegetarian is that you need to add good cheese to the dish or on the side. The second is to make dishes that celebrate the beauty of the veggies and not dishes that try to pass them for something else or imitate meat. I do realize that some of you might now wonder about the above meatballs, but I can assure you it’s not the case: I took inspiration from old Romanian fasting recipes (added the chickpeas myself, we don’t have them back home. Same for the seeds).