4 changes in, and I can't help but wonder am I making a tiny drop in a vast ocean? It's great making small, simple, changes but I can't help think, is it time to face the stark reality? Things need to change, quickly, if we are to save our planet.

A few months ago I remember watching an expert on Facebook (I wish I could remember who it was) talking about the three most important things we can do to reverse a potential climate catastrophe, they were;

According to The Guardian's aptly named article why eating less meat is the best thing you can do for the planet in 2019.

I really want to stick to making weekly, simple, changes, but this week it's time to go for a biggen! Eat less meat....

To become a vegetarian overnight won't be easy, and if I'm completely honest with my self I am not sure I want to. So I have decided to break this one down into smaller 'bite sized' chunks (quality pun!), which i can revisit over the coming weeks.

According to Business Insider the number one food with the biggest environmental impact is lamb. Now that's great news in our household, we rarely eat lamb (although from now on we have chosen to forgo it completely). And number 2 according to Business Insider is... Beef.

Ok so beef, now there's more of a challenge, and there we go, change number 5 is on... stop eating beef! I think as my story progresses I will be removing other meats from my diet but I feel I need to go one step at a time.

So I sat down and looked at all the dishes I eat that contain beef, most are easy enough to simply stop having, but the two dishes I eat that contain beef I really like are : 

As a family we have made plenty of Quorn bologneses before and love them, so, after a quick chat, beef bolognese is now off our menu. Quorn spaghetti bolognese tastes damn nice, this one is a particular favourite in our household.

Beef burgers will definitely be hard, I am a sucker for a decent juicy burger, however I really want to make this switch last so am going to spend more than one week on this change. For the next few weeks, along with regular weekly changes, I'm going to try cooking as many vegetarian beef burger recipes / substitute beef burgers I can find. BRING IT ON!

Update 

For those of you following me on my journey I urge you to Google 'meat free burger recipes' and have a go. After some kitchen fun I finally narrowed my beefy replacement to lentil burgers.

For shop bought burgers I found this list really helpful in making a decision. Our family really loves Aldi's Sweet Potato Burgers but everyone is different and I urge you to explore them all. It was actually really fun doing this with our kids. It became a sort of mini MasterChef judging in which we could educate our kids why we were doing this and having some fun at the same time. 

Finally for those of you wanting to find out more about meat's effects on our environment I would suggest spending some time on the Meat Free Monday website did you know that 

See you next week :)