I'm going vegetarian! (For January)

I'm going meat-free for the whole of January. 31 days of no meat or fish. Obviously, everyone keeps asking 'why?', which is a bloody good question, and one that I'm starting to ask myself. I almost definitely eat too much meat. I have pretty much no clue about how to cook good veggie stuff. I think that perhaps I just fancy a new challenge.

A few kind souls have offered to sponsor me for my efforts, so I've set up a page on JustGiving to raise a bit of money for the Children's Heart Unit at the Freeman. If that's not an incentive to stay on the meat-free wagon, I don't know what is.

If there's one thing I've learned over the past few weeks while I've been researching, it's that it's a bit of a minefield in terms of knowing exactly what you can and can't have. So in the interests of clearing things up from the offset, I will be eating dairy products, but I'll be avoiding everything that isn't suitable for vegetarians (not vegans).

I absolutely love meat and I've got no desire whatsoever to give it up permanently, but I'm pretty excited about the whole thing now.

So, please do point me in the direction of any veggie blogs I should be reading, recipes I should be trying, or places I can go out to eat in the North East when I totally run out of inspiration.

Meanwhile, I'll be cursing about the whole thing over on Twitter.