Hello!

Whilst being a student, eating can be a daily issue that many of us face. What to cook, where to buy it etc. are all dilemmas that students face. Now add the extra difficulty of being a vegetarian. Yeh, I know. Some students may take the easy option and bulk buy pot noodles and ready meals, as actual cooking is far too time consuming and complicated. Not to mention the fact that most cookers at university halls are absolutely hopeless! But cooking at uni doesn’t have to be a chore, stressful or unhealthy.

A good place to start for students preparing to go to Uni or having first got to uni, is to buy a cook book especially written for students.  My cookbook of choice was ‘Vegetarian Nosh for Students’ written by Joy May. In this cookbook is a whole host of recipes for different occasions and needs, including quick meals and also meals to impress. As it is aimed at students it doesn’t require any obscure ingredients or complicated equipment, which is exactly what a student needs. It also has a checklist of cupboard essentials that make life much easier when cooking. As a vegetarian, it can be hard sometimes when your flatmates are ordering fried chicken and chips, and you don’t really fancy ordering another portion of chips and a badly made veggie burger for the 100^th time.

Other books I chose to buy was a book of different pasta recipes, as pasta, as you probably know, is a student staple. How many different pasta recipes are there you may ask? Well in my recipe book theres a 100, and as students actual spend about half a year at uni by the time you take away reading weeks, Christmas and Easter breaks and of course the 4 month summer hols, 100 pasta recipes will do just fine.

Although pasta is a great quick and easy meal that requires little ingredients, don’t get too disheartened, pasta is not the only meal that us vegetarians can eat. There are a whole host of different meals that we can cook, and recipes that can be slightly changed in order to suit our needs. My personals favorites include chilli butternut squash risotto, spinach and chickpea korma, shepherd’s pie (with Quorn mince), (Quorn) chicken fajitas and chilli con Quorn (chilli con carne with Quorn mince). And they are just a few recipes that can be cooked up quick and easy, and probably most importantly, cheaply!

With this blog, I hope to share good vegetarian recipes, tips and tricks, great places to find vegetarian food in Manchester and places to buy your ingredients.

Hannah x