One of my closest friends (Paul Christian by name but not by nature) was once in a band called ‘Crusading Quincy and the Doctors of Pathology’ – as you might imagine they weren’t very successful but it was in the days when punk was exploding all over Britain and everyone with aspirations to be one of the next Sex Pistols was in a band.

I’ve been given a lot of time for thought while I’ve been sick and again while recovering from my op and I’ve decided I’m going on two crusades. One I’ll save for another day but the other is vegetarianism. Well, to be more precise, the treatment of vegetarians in restaurants.

Of course I know that my vegetarianism is something I chose so I only have myself ‘to blame’ but I regard it as a moral judgement similar to whether or not to follow a religion, have an abortion, use contraception, cover head or legs, indulge in fox hunting or whatever else. It’s something that I thought about and decided I couldn’t do anymore. Nothing over the twenty-five years since I became veggie has made me think I got it wrong – my animals are all sentient beings, each one with a personality and a brain that gets them what they want so I feel that my decision was a good one. My personal moral code says it isn’t right to eat meat so I don’t. It’s as simple as that.

I’ve never been a ‘tub thumping’ veggie – I never pick fights with meat eaters or respond when they try to pick fights with me…..one of the best ‘fights’ someone tried to pick with me was a butcher who screamed at me ‘you’ll do me out of a job, the likes of you’ – I retorted that he should consider a move to green grocery then and he looked bemused. I don’t think he got it at all. I even cook meat fairly regularly for my family and friends who are meat eaters and do my best to make sure it is delicious for them. I have a few ‘stock dishes’ that I know I can do well and just rotate them.

Over this weekend though, I’ve had a change of heart. I’ve decided to get a bit tougher with restaurants where there isn’t a veggie option on the menu and those restaurants that have what I regard as ‘cop-out’ dishes.

Why is this? Well, we couldn’t feed my folks in our little house in Cornwall because we’ve no table and only two chairs so we took them out for dinner two nights in a row. On the first night, we went to a restaurant in an hotel where they pride themselves on using locally produced food wherever possible in their menu and their wine list also has Cornish produced wine, ale and cider too. Now I thought this place would be just up my alley. I thought I’d have a wonderful time there. I phoned to book, asked about the availability of vegetarian food and was assured that there would be food available for us.

When we arrived, the owner knew who we were from the phone conversation I’d had with him earlier in the day and the lounge where he seated us to look at the menu was lovely. I had a really warm feeling about it. The ambience couldn’t have been better, I had the prospect of some locally -grown food and good company. What more could I want?

The menu had no vegetarian dishes on it despite my conversation with the owner. DM looked at it and commented that there was nothing for us. I looked and my heart sank. David had assumed the dish described as ‘a platter of steamed, and sautéed vegetables’ was the accompaniment to the meat and fish dishes listed above. I was not convinced. My assumption was we were supposed to eat that as a meal. I checked with the waitress and she confirmed that the dish was in fact the vegetarian option.

Now I’m not a nutritionist but I do know that a balanced meal has a number of elements to it, firstly protein, secondly carbohydrates and thirdly vegetables. A vegetarian meal is no different from any other except that the protein comes from non-meat sources such as beans, nuts, pulses or dairy products.

I got a bee in my bonnet and challenged the waitress who assured me that it was a proper meal and that we wouldn’t be disappointed.

The restaurant itself was lovely, the ambience excellent, my parents thoroughly enjoyed their meals but DM and I had a miserable time. The ‘platter of steamed, and sautéed vegetables’ was just that, a plate of vegetables, (but cooked, not like my raw ones here) slung together to appease the non-meat eaters. It basically consisted of the vegetable accompaniments to the other dishes, with a few char-grilled peppers and courgettes around the edge and a couple of morels on the side of the plate.

I can imagine that for a meat eater who wanted to count the calories it would have made an adequate meal (you don’t need to eat protein at every meal if you eat meat because it’s so rich in it) but my heart sank.

Interestingly the food on my plate probably cost 10% of the cost of the food on my Mum’s plate yet we were also charged the same price for ours as theirs.

The following evening, we went to another restaurant and had a delicious vegetarian meal, complete with protein (chick peas and pine nuts) and the price of the meal was 50% lower than the previous evening and about 30% lower than the meat dishes on the same menu.

So, I have decided to go on a crusade and instead of keeping my trap shut when I see a menu that has no vegetarian food on it in future, I’m going to make a fuss. Even if the owners of the restaurants hate me for it and resent the observations, at least I may make them think for the future and someone else may benefit after me.

Oh and don’t get me started on the menus where the vegetarian dish is ‘mushroom stroganoff’ – do people think that veggies want to eat the same dish in every restaurant they go to? Perhaps then they should consider changing their menus to offer a single meat dish and all confer with one another to make sure it’s ‘boeuf bourgignon’ everywhere in the country. Now there is a thought.