You can get them in any bio shop, tamari is easy to get, there are also low salt versions, Lima are probably the most widely distributed brand. There are lots of varieties of miso though often the shops will have just two or three.
I am surprised to find this myself - I agree.
Ah, yes! The old "Is no’ meat. Is … " joke. The one I trot out is the Spanish waiter who has put an omlette in front of a veggie who complains that it has ham in it. “Is no’ meat. Is 'am”
A Danish friend was surprised to see me eating ‘meat’ at breakfast. “Is no’ meat. Is bacon…”
The g/f of a pal said that her ambition was to have as many prs shoes as Imelda Marcos. She was vegetarian 
So to the original Q. I was veggie for about 2 years. That is more than enough time to ‘flush out’ the ‘toxins’ that vegetarians reckon are in ones system as a meat eater. There were 4-5 of us in the flat, all cooking/eating together, inc my g/f who had previous experience of cooking veggie.
"One feels so much lighter’ " say the veggies. Yes, I did. Lighter and lighter. One day I had an accident which I identified as caused by being somewhat ‘too light’ - not quite down to earth enough to deal with the problem, which I recognised but did nothing about.
The doctor stitching up the spit in my chin - no anasthetic as not enough depth of tissue to inject - said, “My goodness! You have exceptional tolarance of pain!” In fact I was not there. I was floating above the bed, looking down on me and the doc …
That was the final legacy of my time as a veggie because for some reason I had the instinctive remedy for this excessive ‘lightness of being’ which being veggie had induced.
I went to the nearest butcher, bought a 10oz steak, chucked it under the grill and immediately felt very much better. I had the feeling - “I’m back”
Vegetarian friends are horrified at this. “Didn’t you have a tremendous reaction after two years without meat? How did your system cope?”
“Reaction? Yes. Felt like me again. System coped perfectly. Back to normal”
I make soup with whatever vegetables are at hand.
Today, courgette, onion, potato…
olive oil, garlic, sage, black pepper (no salt)… a little water…
When it’s all soft enough, I use a masher to break it down… and we end up with a delicious chunky soup.
With what’s leftover, I add a little duck fat and white beans … makes another lovely soup for the next day.
I think the environmental case for most people eating vegan most of the time is cast-iron - and I think there’s a problem with the ‘what would you miss?’ kind of question, because many people really don’t know what they’re already missing in good plant-based cooking.
Perhaps a good analogy would be Brits’ relatively recent love affair with curry: before they explored it, they really didn’t know what they were missing.
I’m not totally convinced by the very strict vegan argument, because I think there is an environmental case for eating some wild or non-intensive meat and dairy, and for the old sustainable mixed farming model for some soil conditions and climates.
I was vegetarian in my youth, and we’re going back to eating more vegetarian, and frequently vegan again now - but I have a slightly different take on the ‘what would you miss?’ question than most here, because i know that most of what we really enjoy at home can be replaced by equally delicious vegan alternatives. What I would miss if I were strictly vegan is literally tasting the richness of human history and cultures - traveling to different places and not even trying the local traditional seafood speciality, or whatever.
For me, a central reason for action on climate/ecological breakdown is precisely minimising the loss of cultures, including cuisines, honed over generations by often anonymous artists, musicians, scientists, writers - and butchers and fishermen and cooks… So for me, I guess, the ideal is that balance implied in the phrase ‘a mainly plant-based diet’.
Incidentally, I’m reading lot of oral history at the moment (for example the old Routledge History Workshop series) - it’s really striking in the food memories - reaching back into the 19thcentury - that they talk about hardly ever having any meat in working-class childhoods as a sort-of deprivation - but in fact what comes across far more strongly is how much they miss the delicious cooking their mothers conjured from the fruit and vegetables they did have.
Yes some do talk bollix
Funnily enough, the nostalgia of food memory even extended to children of China’s Cultural Revolution. I remember a restaurant opened in Haidian district of Beijing serving amongst other ‘extreme cuisine’, actual grass soup. Not lemongrass. Field grass. 
https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB935677142851115685
You are absolutely right Geof, food and the cuisine of cultures hold treasured collective memory. That said, I don’t recommend eating grass soup
You can use it the way you would a stock cube, or mix it with a bit of vinegar, chilli paste and flakes, sesame oil and a pinch of sugar and you have a nice dipping sauce (also delicious in sandwiches). The green tubs in my photograph are the ready-made version, called ssamjang in Korean.
An issue I don’t see raised by vegetarians is - manure. The best food for plants is manure. Waste product of animals’ digestions. I know from the leaf pit at school and in Kensington Gardens how long it takes to rot down vegetable matter.
We all, apart from people like Bill Wyman, appreciate the seasonal smell of muck-spreading, to bring on the following season’s crops.
But, if largely or completely vegetarian, what animals?
I did mention that “there is an environmental case for eating some wild or non-intensive meat and dairy, and for the old sustainable mixed farming model for some soil conditions and climates.”
However, it’s important not to exaggerate this - as I understand it, entirely vegan farming/gardening is not only possible in most conditions most of the time, but often preferable.
The most non-intensive farm meat I ever had was a lamb which had been missed in the previous lamb season and had gone back out onto the hill on my friend’s Tweed valley farm.
As we were bringing the ewes down for their jabs or something, this super-lamb was spotted. It was unsellable as lamb so it was parked in a barn while McTavish the registered slaughter-man was summoned to do the deed.
The lamb went to its slaughter as per the saying, ending up, cleaned out, hanging by its back feet from a beam.
Next morning David said, “Who’s for devilled kidneys for breakfast?”
“Meeee!”
Handing me a sharp knife he said “Right. Bring them in”
“Bring them in? Where from?”
“From the lamb, laddie. From the lamb”
And there they were. The only bits of its viscera remaining attached.
Fresh. Free range… Marvellous.
On the other hand - David went for capons. Once he had the chicks chez lui he was committed. He had to stick some sort of steriod pill or whatever under the skin of their necks. I think that’s whatt he said.
He was appalled at the rate these things grew. In a trice they were the size of small geese. He was very relieved when a kosher butcher from Glasgow bought the lot but not particularly happy with the way the rabbi despatched them.
He made good money but said “Never again”
It would be interesting to see how many meatetarians would be happy with their diet if collection of the portions was their responsibility. I’m very comfortable with dispatch and butchering though probably not especially skilled, but I do wonder.
I have eaten plenty of furry feathered and scaly things killed and cleaned by me over the years 
I have no problem with the whole process, I have played a major role in the killing & processing of a sheep, under expert guidance, also chickens so not a problem. I will add we only buy local meat that we can see in the fields all round us, equally I try to only eat veg/ fruit I grow or is grown in UK
@Ancient_Mariner
Same here as Veroniquede1 posted, & from an early age. Except from fish, nothing other scaly, but I’d try what ever scaly things that locals eat if not an endangered species.
I have a rooster, King William, in the freezer. I need to bin him, it’s been over 2 years so no good now. Couldn’t bring myself to cook him 
! The neigbours came iver and showed us what to do, I gave them the other one. If TSHTF at least I know how to do it but for the moment no idea what to do with all the roosters that are currently chicks! I’m not squeamish, grew up on a farm, was just too attached to my chooks a while back!
I couldn’t eat one of my pet creatures.
I have murdered plenty of vegatables, skinned them alive and boiled them in oil, the eyes on the potatoes looked particularly sad I almost couldnt do it. 
Assassin 
Tory! That’s very naughty! He could still be strutting around annoying everyone to distraction with his crowing. Once he was rendered brown bread, the thing to do was to eat him.
