My meat or fish portions tend to be very small - but sort of indespensible - except for sushi where a slab of fresh caught salmon tends to disappear rather quickly.
I also buy a lot of pulses from the Indian shops in Helsinki.
I had a client making soy chunks a couple of year ago and tested a lot of different recipes using their product. But I found the texture really hard to handle. I still occasionally test new recipes but I've ever been happy enough to offer soy chunks to my guests.
Milk I'd find hard to be without. The perfect cup of tea, for me, needs a splash of milk. Other that use that I maybe use 500 ml max a week of dairy products in sauces etc.
I guess I could really cut down on meat, but I don't regard myself as a major offender. You can't be me, I'm taken
wow. Let's see - about 2 l. of milk, 250-300 ml of cream, 350g. of butter and 1.5 kg of cheese.
Meatwise - 1-1.5 kg, including seafood.
Meatwise about the same for me, but not counting guests.
BTW I use 7% fat cream and low fat yoghurts, buttermilk and Quark - whatever that mght be in English. You can't be me, I'm taken
btw quark - roughly cottage cheese.
Virgin rape oil is very tasty! You can't be me, I'm taken
Did you not know this is the Finnish motto? You can't be me, I'm taken
soy based cream sauces? ugh.
I like to use a lot of yoghurt in marinades and in mongol cooking (long and slow and sealed) You can't be me, I'm taken
I got an old Danish iron casserole at the flea market, that has a perfect seal due to the weight of the lid. And though I cook on ceramic, it is easy to get the mongol pot to simmer minimally. It is an excellent type of coooking for those chefs whose sense of time may become distorted. You can't be me, I'm taken
Rice milk is the perfect substitute for cereals. Unfortunately I've never seen a rice cream. (Do they even exist?)
I buy organic milk for tea, and very occasionally organic cream. But I think dairy production is a relatively minor distraction from intensive meat farming.
If you have a dead cow someone might as well eat it. It's when you have millions of dead cows being farmed, killed, cut up, processed and shipped around the world that you have to start asking questions about efficiency.
Modern dairy farming is very intensive and polluting. (It also feeds the meat market, most of the cheaper supermarket cuts being dairy cow or heifer).
Yet I'm not suggesting people should boycott cows' milk and derived products (unless for personal health reasons). What is objectionable is the amount of marketing/advertising/packaging/shelf space devoted to small volumes of low-quality milk turned into various yoghurts and other more or less fermented products, creamy desserts, and intestinal stimulants, sold at high prices : industrial dairy production feeding straight into a marketing-based food industry sector. I don't know what the ratio of raw material to abusively "manufactured" added value (the marketing, ads, packaging, merchandising) in the cost price is, but the continuous pressure to bring down the price paid to the dairy farmer leads directly to increased intensification and the debasement of the product. Better-quality producers and products, such as traditional cheeses, are increasingly marginalised (even in France).
But, as with meat, the marketing works. It's not easy to see how to turn the situation round.
