What is your favourite most nutritious meal?

A basic question and a very good one. I think at this point I should confess that I am one of those dreaded vegetarians and I have taken it so far so as to have settled close to vegan. I was wondering how I was going to break the news to those avid meat eaters out there; being a Kiwi girl it has been hard enough breaking it to friends and family. I came to vegetarianism when I was 20 and apart from a fall to fish once about two years ago, I have been vegetarian for ten years.

Once swearing I could never give up meat and feeding porterhouse to friends as a snack when they came to our family home - I remember every meaty flavour vividly - the only reason for becoming vegetarian was an interest in meditation where sustaining the body with only plant life is meant to lead to a clearer mind.

I decided I’d rather live a life where I was open to try anything and through experimenting with various different restrictions on my eating I learned to cook better. My food became more creative and more flavoursome. Then I would lift a restriction and combine techniques and food became magical.

Becoming a vegetarian once you have eaten meat is a delicate process. It requires a good knowledge of nutrition and an understanding of the addiction your body has to meat. I guess what I am saying is don’t go vegetarian unless you know what you are doing and have clear nutritional programme that leads you into it, to minimise meat withdrawal symptoms. You could start with experimentation, a vegetarian night, a raw food night, a gluten free night, a grain free night and then combinations of these and other food experiments, your body will quickly tell you what it prefers to digest.

My favourite most nutritious meal would have to be mung beans cooked till they are the consistency of refried beans with baby spinach leaves stirred through on a bed of short grain brown rice with fresh tomato, avocado and basil salad dressed in flax oil and tamari sauce (a gluten free soy) and with freshly toasted pine nuts sprinkled on top. If you cook your pine nuts in a normal frying pan without oil and keep them moving it will keep the fat content down. I also like to sprinkle LSA (Ground linseeds, sunflower seeds and almond) and of course black pepper over the meal. This perhaps has everything a vegetarian or any tarian could ask for.

Please note that I still cook meat for others, transferring flavours used on tofu or tomatoes to meat dishes and transferring the flavours I use for meat dishes to flavour tofu and well so many things.

Want to know more? Email asksarah@tstnz.com with your questions.