The theme for mini mofo (the miniature, monthly spin off from the vegan month of food) is lazy. Which is fantastic. What a time to be alive for the lazy vegan in Torquay. We can buy our lunch from The Kind Grind, order pizza or ring for an Indian. Just because we can’t be arsed doesn’t mean we’re forced to eat hummus. No, I eat hummus because I choose to eat hummus. Still there are a few gaps in the market. For instance, what do you do on nights when you have enough energy to turn on the oven but not awake enough for food prep? Well now we have some new ready meal options.

Waitrose announced a new range of ready meals for vegetarians that included, for the first time in the UK, meat from the Vegetarian Butcher. They’ve started to arrive in the local branch on St Mary Church Road so it’s time to see what this means for vegans. For starters it means options! Choices. You can have a Rainbow Vegetable Stew, a Green Thai Curry, Three Bean Chilli and Couscous, or Vegetarian Chilli with Rice. Each weigh in at £3. We went for the Green Thai Curry and The Rainbow Vegetable Stew.

Desperate to get our hands on some of that Vegetarian Butcher meat we went for the Green Thai Curry. The chicken did have an incredible texture, appearance and flavour. it wasn’t exactly like chicken but its the closest I’ve ever seen. Very impressive. The rest of the curry was a bit meh. We both found that our curry was full of big chinks of chicken and big chunks of bamboo shoot but it only had three or four small pieces of french bean. It made it seem really unbalanced. The sauce also seemed really heavy to me and could really have used some crunch french beans to lighten it up.

The Rainbow Stew, in contrast, was full of veggies. Mostly squash, bits of beetroot and kale to round out the rainbow. It was all served in a lovely tomato sauce with gorgeous little lentils in their to fill you up. For my taste the vegetable were a bit under done. Textbook al dente, but I generally want more of a melt in the mouth quality in a stew. The variety of texture, flavour, and – of course – colour from the different veggie worked well.

All in all I’d eat either of them again, though I might wait for a sale. I felt a little let down, though that might just be my expectations. These are ready meals after all. Keeping in mind that they are ready meals, they are good ready meals. Worth stashing in the freezer for a rainy day.