Go Easy On The Meat With Help From These 5 Great Tools

(Image: Val's Photos)

It's National Vegetarian Week - the UK's annual awareness raising week to encourage people to enjoy a diet of less or little meat. Are you thinking about going easy on the meat and a little afraid of how you're going to feed yourself a balanced meal? Or are you a new-found but fully committed veggie looking for some recipes? Wherever you may be on your veggie path, here are five clever tools to help you eat less meat with ease.

1. Not for the easily offended , WhatthefuckshouldImakefordinner.com has some randomly selected and fairly aggressive suggestions for meals. Click on "I don't fucking eat meat" for the veggie option, and then click on the title of the dish to be taken through to a recipe.

2. If you're the proud owner of a smart phone, there are quite a few iPhone apps out there to help you lessen your culinary carbon footprint. Veggie Lovers Recipes, Vegetarian How to Cook Everything and VegOut - Vegetarian Recipe Guide are all pretty self explanatory but we particularly love Veggie Passport. It translates your vegetarian needs into 33 languages, perfect for when you're on holiday and need to explain to the waiter that no, chicken is not a vegetable.

3.  The BBC Good Food website has a huge selection of lovely veggie recipes as do Jamie Oliver and Delia Smith. But our particular favourite has to be The New Vegetarian column of the Guardian, written by Yotam Ottolenghi of top restaurant Ottolenghi, every single recipe is mouthwateringly wonderful.

4. If you just don't feel confident in the kitchen there are plenty of vegetarian cooking classes around. The Vegetarian Society approved Cordon Vert Cookery School offer residential courses as well as one or two day workshops for the entirely inexperienced to the expert. Gujarati Rasoi will teach curry fans how to make a whole meal's worth of veggie Indian food, from mains to sides to dessert (they also sell their lovely food at Borough, Broadway and Exmouth markets).

5. To swap recipes with other vegetarians (or even to meet the vegetarian love of your life) head to Vegfest in Bristol this weekend. Packed full of food demonstrations, caterers and cafés, talks, information and fashion as well as music and film. For other veggie and vegan festivals near you look at this website.

A little while ago we blogged about 5 meaty meatless meals, dishes that fill you up without doing too much damage to the earth. If you're after more advice and inspiration on how to Go Easy On The Meat go here.

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