Weight Watching...

There is a certain stereotypical image of vegetarians, that of a pasty-faced and skinny person. Personally, I don't know any veggies that fit that description and I certainly don't. One of my biggest problems is that a large amount of my protein comes from dairy products, and I seem to end up piling on the pounds.

I've never been very good at diets, but some pictures I saw of me at the New Year and the scales hitting 15 stone, made me decide to lose a few pounds.

I decided on the Weight Watchers diet. My wife used to belong to a local group, and has belonged to the online community. We have plenty of their books and there are plenty of good vegetarian recipes in them.

Now, as it quite obvious from this blog, both my wife and I love our food, so I decided that I wouldn't forgo my favourite hobby, but I would follow the diet at home, cut out snacks and join a gym. Okay, so it would take a little longer to lose the weight, but I hoped that by not being quite so strict I would be able to achieve some success.

So that's what I did. And after six months I've lost two stone and am still going.

The most pleasant surprise is how good some of the recipes are. One of my favourites is Thai Green Pumpkin Curry, pictured above. One of the difficulties with doing anything Thai for a vegetarian is the fish sauce or shrimp paste that appears in just about all the "Thai" sauces and pastes on the market. Normally, I use an Indian paste instead, which tastes just as good. Occasionally, if I've got the ingredients I'll make my own.

However, I discovered that Blue Dragon do a Thai Green Curry Paste that is suitable for vegetarians, but be careful though as they also do one that isn't. They do a Red Curry Paste in the same range that is fish free too. Boy, is it spicy - and I ended up having one of the hottest curries I've had for quite a while!