Hi Everyone,
As a self-confessed weekday vegetarian, my friends tease me that I have it easy during Lent; that I have a readymade forbearance. I see what they mean, however, I keep telling them, it is about a lifestyle, not deprivation – thoughts I shared years ago in this column.
I believe in a gradual change that can be adopted long after Lent is over.
My weekday vegetarian style of eating was borne out of a desire to return to the kind of eating I enjoyed when I lived in Guyana. I must say though that my weekday eating in Guyana was not purely vegetarian, there was plenty of seafood and a wide variety. However, fresh local seafood here in Barbados can be very expensive and it is seasonal. There is not a lot of variety, unless you plan to buy imported, farm raised, frozen seafood from faraway lands – I don’t. On the other hand, buying Guyanese seafood from some Guyanese importers/vendors is a chance I am no longer willing to take – you pay the premium prices they demand (because they know you long for a taste of home) but they sell you old stock that is freezer burnt and ultimately void of taste no matter how well you prepare it and cook it. Therefore, instead of the hassle and high cost of local seafood, the frozen farm raised seafood or the high-priced-poor-quality seafood, my weekday meals are vegetarian.
During Lent, I challenge myself to think of different flavour profiles and ways of cooking my vegetarian food. I like to think of it as veggies upon veggies. Let me share some of those ideas with you, especially if your plan this year is to eat more vegetarian food during Lent.
