Teetotal Vegetarianism - Day 18 May 22nd 2009

'If we're not supposed to eat animals, how come they're made out of meat' - Tom Snyder

I was awoken in the early hours by an incessant buzzing and the occasional bang. I looked up to see a Cockchafer launching an assault on my bedroom. Yes, you read that right, a Cockchafer. And no it is not someone who chaffs cocks. It is the proper name of a May Bug. Big ugly beetle-like insect;

It noticed me and turned its attack toward in my direction; dive bombing a poor defenceless teetotal vegetarian. I ran for the sanctity of the bathroom and hid for 5 minutes listening to the damage being done. After a while I manned up and headed out to capture the beast; and after a long drawn out game of wits it was returned to dark that it had emerged from.

I thought it prevalent to include this tale of woe in the vegetarian section of the blog as according to Wikipedia;

In some areas and times, cockchafers even served as food. A 19th century recipe from France for cockchafer soup reads: "roast 1 lb (454 g) of cockchafers without wings and legs in sizzling butter, then cook them in a chicken soup, add some veal liver and serve with chives on a toast". And a German newspaper from Fulda from the 1920s tells of students eating sugar-coated cockchafers. A cockchafer stew is referred to in W.G. Sebald's novel The Emigrants.

People ate Cockchafers?! It’s enough to turn you off meat for life! Well, almost.

Vegetarian Dish of the Day:

The co-operative cheese, garlic and tortelloni.

Box Blurb: Filled free range egg pasta parcels with ricotta, full fat soft cheese, Cheddar cheese, Italian style hard cheese and spinach.

The co-operative fusilli.

Box Blurb: Tricolour pasta twists made with durum wheat

As I was in a rush this evening I grabbed at the cupboard in search of a quick meal. Microwave fodder aside there is nothing quicker than pasta. There is a wealth of pasta in many shapes and sizes. Fresh pasta is cooked in hot water in a matter of minutes will the dried variety takes around 10 minutes. Throw in a pasta sauce and you have a filling meal. While it could be any kind of pasta the two I had in where a tortelloni;

‘Tortelloni are stuffed pasta, the same shape as tortellini, but larger. They are usually stuffed with Ricotta cheese and leaf vegetables, such as spinach.’

And a fusilli;

‘Fusilli (also called pasta twirls) is a small, thick, corkscrew shaped pasta. The word fusilli means "little spindles" in Italian. Green and red varieties of fusilli (or any pasta) are created by using spinach or beet juice, respectively, instead of water.’

(all definitions from Wikipedia)