Life with Bees

"Flexitarianism'' is apparently the new way forward for veggie lovers, the Sydney Morning Herald reports. Australians are taking different approaches to vegetarianism, including not counting fish and chicken as meat. Karen Fornito hates meat, which tastes ''like blood'' to her, and won't usually eat it unless it's disguised in a pizza or a spag bol. But she will eat fish and chicken if it's well cooked and doesn't call herself a vegetarian to avoid confusing her friends. Meanwhile Americans are preparing fewer meat meals, even though they're cooking at home more to save money in the credit crunch. These ''recession flexitarians" are semi-vegos who occasionally indulge in meat and you can join their ranks by cutting meat from your menu every couple of days. Gourmet.com recommends measures such as adopting a "meatless Monday" ala Paul McCartney or a "vegan-before-dinnertime" diet, where breakfast and lunch are meat and dairy-free. [Gourmet.com]

"Flexitarianism" isn't new - the term was coined back in the early 2000s and has been used to describe people who are mostly vego but also eat meat. But the problem with this approach is that it reinforces the idea that the world must be divided into red-blooded/thoughtless meat eaters and saintly/annoying vegetarians. Naming and defining "flexitarianism" as a deliberate merging of the two camps (a deliberate grey area, if you will) simply validates both meat-eating and vegetarianism and promotes the idea that these are the only two food options available to humanity.

We are omnivores - we will eat most things. Calling someone "flexitarian'' because they decide to eat both meat and vegetables is as silly as insisting that people should eat only meat or vegetables. Growing up in Asia, my family ate a diet that was 75% vegetables and 25% meat, for the simple reason that meat was expensive and we could only buy it every couple of days. When we did have meat, it was mostly chicken pieces, beef or goat mince. It was often used as part of a stew or curry dish that also included vegetables and was always served with extra dishes of veg. As a result, I'm conditioned to eat tiny amounts of meat and a sea of greens. TK grew up in a Western household on a diet that was pretty much the reverse of mine - for him, a well-crafted and lovingly prepared meat dish is essential every day. Neither of us would ever give up eating meat or veg - although there are sometimes arguments along the lines of "where the hell are the vegetables??" or "bring out the bloody meat!"

So if we eat both meat and vegetables, perhaps we are just doing what comes naturally. We don't need to be flexitarian or pescavegan or vegoflexes. And if we eat meat but reserve the right to be vego when it suits us and vice versa - well, maybe then we're just fussy.

Eat cake instead.

We were converted to the Brazilian churrasco experience earlier this year when we ate ourselves silly at Braza in Sydney's Leichhardt. Braza was a lucky find - TK discovered it on his phone while we were in Sydney for Top Gear Live and it capped off a delightful weekend. The churrasco - or Brazilian barbecue - proved an instant hit with its endless parade of roasted meat, game and fish served on swords, known as rodizio-style barbecue. The punchy, sugar-filled Brazilian cocktails and platters of traditional sides such as plantain chips rounded out the meal and gave a counterpoint to the vast meat array.

So the guys have been excited about the prospect of Canberran churrasco in the form of Mistress at Manuka. This fairly new restaurant sits on Manuka's main food strip, alongside Paparazzi bar and Lawson's Grill, and also does service as a tapas bar and red-lit nightspot.

The two men had the full all-you-can-eat churrasco ($55) while I, mindful of my small and useless stomach, had a half-churrasco ($35). The entrees were an assortment of chicken wings, beef ribs, grilled mushrooms and tiny meat skewers (I didn't have one so I can't remember what they were). A couple of deep-fried haloumi made a good snack but a similar pile of prawns just tasted like seafood Burger Rings.

Next a platter of accompaniments - sliced green beans, canned mango and onion, generic salad and banana fanofo, a traditional side dish which at Mistress amounted to little more than shrivelled cubes among dusty breadcrumbs.

And then the parade of meat began. Everything melded into one - not because of the sheer size of the array, but more the immense blandness of the meat. TK, who had rubbed his hands in glee when he saw Mistress promised to grill its meat over ''bourbon soaked hickory chips", inspected everything for a smoke ring and was disappointed every time. There was beef, and then pork, and then something else, each promising a flavour, a twist, an idea, on the menu but delivering a generic barbecue taste. A lime and quince chicken stood out - it actually tasted of lime. A blackened scotch fillet was given approval. Several baby octopus looked promising, but were buoyantly rubbery. They were only memorable visually. My gentleman companions, who had enthusiastically eaten everything in sight at Braza for about three hours, laid down their meat tongs in disgust after an hour at Mistress.

TK christened it "Meh at Manuka'' while Si said it was "mediocrity in all the right places''. Perhaps, like all mistresses, the lady at Manuka is fickle and there is better barbecue on other days. And when you compare her to Braza, where delights are found for $40 a head, she is a very expensive roll in the hay.

Mistress at Manuka
42 Franklin Street, Manuka
Food: 2/5
Service: 3/5
Value for Money: 1/5

I'd been looking forward to this weekend for a long time. Not only did I get four days off (random rec leave) but it was Simex's first full weekend after a month of working six-day weeks. And given his recent entry into the Cannot Live Without Roti Canai club, the three of us made a day trip to Sydney to visit Mamak on Goulburn St and to load up on Malaysian sweets and food.


Thanks to Maeve O'Meara and Joanna Saville's Food Safari on SBS, I'd also discovered Makan at Alice's in Thornleigh which sold Malaysian sweets (known as kuih). So I rang up and pre-ordered three boxes of my favourite kuih. We had a box of kuih talam with a deep green bottom of sweet pea and pandan and a layer of coconut cream on top. We also had kuih lapis, a Malaysian staple, with its bright stripes of pink, red and green. The last box had a baked tapioca cake with a light crust.

We drove down in the afternoon, squabbled our way through the northern suburbs ("I thought you were navigating!") and eventually got to Makan at Alice's. It's on Bellevue Road - turn off Pennant Hills Road. After picking up the sweets, we headed back into the city on the M2. TK was very excited about driving over the Sydney Harbour Bridge for the first time. With Si and me shouting out lane changes and checking blind spots, we slowly began merging towards the harbour bridge and the city lights of Sydney. "Hm, we seem to be all banking and IT,'' TK remarked, looking up at the glittering towers that loomed over the bridge.

"What?" asked Si. And as TK started to explain how the big signs on the office towers sometimes indicated the state of Sydney's economy, the lane for the harbour bridge flashed by and we had disappeared into the maw of the cross city tunnel, accompanied only by a shriek of protest from TK.

After doing a comprehensive tour of Oxford Street, we found our way back to the city and finally got to Mamak. It was 6.15pm and there was already a sizable queue out the front. We got a table at the back of the restaurant, argued again over the menu and ordered tons of food. In one mild frenzy we got through three or four roti, beef murtabak, lamb curry, chicken satay, rice, spinach with chilli and shrimp paste, iced rose syrup and beans, and iced coconut with little green sweetpea worms. Along with much of the drinks menu (including a mixed tea-and-coffee drink), it came to about $98 for the three of us. There was no room for a trip to George St to visit the 85 Degree Bakery.

So we did a quick dash through the rain to go on the Darling Harbour ferris wheel and tooled through the Asian grocery in World Square. By the time we got back to Canberra it was nearly 1am - but it was well worth the trip.

We recovered the next day by lying on the couch watching the National Spelling Bee on ESPN and eating the Malaysian cakes and some of our stash from the Asian grocery. This included:


Every Burger biscuits which, quite frankly, looked just like on the packet. They were a sesame biscuit sandwiched with milk chocolate.


And then there were the strange flavours of KitKat:


Muscat of Alexandria was brightly fake grape-flavoured white chocolate while Sweet Potato was just that, creamy and slightly earthy. It was followed by the best almonds in the world.

Sadly, they were not more delicious than we could tell. But thankfully there was also no ''aftertaste without end'', which would have interfered with the beef goulash and buttery mashed potato TK made for dinner.