Dear Meat

Dear Meat,
it's been one week since our last dinner together, and i still believe strongly that ending our relationship was the right decision. You were beginning to bother me tremendously, and i'm sure you had your beef with me as well. Spending a week away from you has opened my eyes to different types of food, i hope you don't mind. And i feel a little bad in saying that i don't miss you at all. So please stop calling. Stop sending me messages in commercials (that must cost you a fortune). I don't need the airplane fly-by's or the aggravation. I am happy to be a vegetarian. I hope you understand.
Sincerely,
blue.

Banana Pudding Hockey Pucks

I have never claimed to be the Iron Chef, and come to think of it i've never been called the Iron Chef either. It's an unfortunate thing, really, because i consider myself to be a talent in the kitchen. I've come a long way from the time my mother so often reminds me when i told her i had made fish and she was thrilled for about thirty seconds until she asked me what kind and i replied, Mrs. Paul's Fish Sticks. It was in that same year that i discovered how tricky it is to make baked goods. Without a recipe in front of me, i began tossing ingredients into a bowl: flour, sugar, baking soda, salt. Simple, right? Bananas, vanilla, eggs, anything that rang a bell went into the bowl. I stirred it all up and scooped pretty little cookies onto the cookie sheet and into the oven they went. They would be my own homemade banana surprise cookies, and they would be fabulous. They weren't. They had a rubber texture much like a hockey puck. And now years later I have managed to create baby hockey puck muffins that i'm embarrassed to give to my 90-plus-year-old neighbor with diminished taste buds. I guess some things don't change.

Bring on the Brussel Sprouts

There are definite prejudices that exist in the realm of eats. Liver and brussel sprouts among the most harassed. For me, it’s a green bean gag reflex. Today I would like to officially take brussel sprouts off the list. With a little olive oil and garlic salt, they become crispy little morsels. Roast them at 400 degrees for 15 minutes, and you’ll see what I mean (Thank you, Vegan with a Vengeance, for the recipe).

Beige Be Gone

One of the things you want to avoid when going vegetarian is falling into a sub-nutritious diet (see Grocery List). S and I have a friend C. who has been a vegetarian for quite some time now. His diet consists mainly of cheese sandwiches and tubs of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream which he incredibly takes down in one go, and more incredibly, afterward manages to maintain a suitable height/weight ratio.
I saw a special on obese people, some 700 to 900 pounds each. They were all suffering quite grotesquely by food addiction. One of the women, confronted with her daily intake of food heaped upon a broad tabletop, replied in a British accent, “Bloody hell, do I eat all this? I might as well drink lard.” One of the points the dietician made was the color of food the subjects ate: beige. Beige foods tend to be high in starch and fat (see Grocery List). It is not a nice color for your drapes, or your insides apparently. So keep that in mind while scouring the grocery aisle for vegetarian edibles. You needn't go the route of a couch potato to have a good time.

Meat By Definition

I looked up the word “meat” in Webster’s New World Dictionary, and it had this to say: “Meat n. the flesh of animals, esp. of mammals, used as food.” And then, “Meat-and-potatoes adj. basic, fundamental.” S. and I attended a barbeque last night after our meat-fest, and there we mentioned briefly our journey into sainthood. One definite NASCAR fan replied in a horrified manner, “Why?! A meal’s not a meal without a slab of meat.” A lot of people feel this way. He is what we call a Meat-And-Potatoes Guy. And I didn’t feel like getting into while happily sipping a strawberry daiquiri. I let the daiquiri take me to an island far, far away from the squirrel hunter. Some things are best left to karmic retribution. Oh yes, the squirrels are coming for us.

The Last Bloody Meal

Well I have chicken wings stuck in my teeth and am feeling more like a vegetarian than ever. The last carnivorous meal consisted of an array of cow, pig and chicken, and was perfectly horrible. We decided we should throw in one vegetarian dish with the order. This came in the form of Friday's 'creamed spinach' that arrived soaked in a butter sauce and dotted with tiny bits of some unknown meat-product. How unfortunate. Spinach deserves better.
So here we are, at the beginning of a new way of eating. I think even my humble S. is beginning to take the “whole vegetarian thing” a bit more seriously. I have vowed to never again eat meat, and he might be close behind. Although I am only concerned with getting him through the next month, happy and meat-free. And so we begin.

The Kitchen Pallette

My dear friend H. offered this advice on cooking. She has been a vegetarian her entire life, and is one of the best chefs I know.

‘Cooking, if approached as an art, can be very much like painting. When looking for inspiration before making a meal, I first prepare the "pallette." I gather the main ingredients thinking about a balance of colors, textures and flavors. I usually try to have at least 3 colors of vegetables and some source of protein like tofu, beans or eggs. I also try to get the soft vs. crunchy proportions just right and take special care not to overcook vegetables. As for taste I try to get happy combinations of salty, sweet or sour and spicy by using:

Salty- soy sauce or Tamari; feta or goat cheese; black bean paste, peanut butter, Tahini

Sweet- hoisin; mirin, pomegranite juice /paste, paprika, ginger, cinnamon/ clove/ cardamom, raisins, coconut milk

Sour- balsamic vinegar, rice wine vinegar, tamarind, lime or lemon, plain yogurt

Spicy- Sambal Olek chili, Harissa paste, cayenne, cumin, thai curry pastes (panang is the hottest), garlic, garam masala (indian spice mixture), tumeric

All of the above are staples I regularly keep in the kitchen.’

Thanks, H! You rock.

The Grocery List.

There are graceful ways of dealing with deprivation. This was not one of them. Here are a few things S. purchased last night in preparation for our Month Without Meat.

Ruffles potatoe chips
Melba toast
Triscuits
Fritos
pretzel nibblers
2 cans New England clam chowder
refried beans
fruit snacks
10 crispy battered fish sticks
jalapeno poppers
Red Baron 4-cheese pizza
A cheese ball.

So this is not exactly the grocery list i would have made. What i witnessed last night can only be described as 'comfort shopping.'

Hasta La Vista, Meat.

I was complaining the other day to my dear S. about the fact that I had eaten so much meat this year already and I was supposed to be a vegetarian. I did the v. thing for a year a half and I don’t remember why I started eating meat again, but I blame him. My parents still ask, ‘Is steak ok?’ and I have to reassure them that I have once again entered the animal eating kingdom. ‘Yes, I eat steak and am not happy about it,’ is my reply.
So Sunday, June 10, the Month Without Meat campaign begins. I realized I needed to rope S. into doing a month with me, so I could get into cooking v. meals again which is where I think my meat-eating problem lay from the beginning. I’ll make you chicken and I’ll have…. Chicken. Because it’s there and free (thanks to the generous Madam Mim who conveniently buys too much so she can supply us with food). Basically, I got lazy. I forgot what mattered to me. So here we are, a few days away from the new beginning, and I am very excited.
For me it will not be difficult to go a month without meat. I have an awesome book, Vegan with a Vengeance, as well as other cookbooks and basic kitchen skills to work up happy cow meals for the house. I’m pretty easy to please and don’t have the meat-tooth a lot of people have. S. on the other hand, is a flesh fiend. He lives for his tiny pork sausages, ground cow and grilled chicken. For him this will be no easy feat, and you are all invited to watch. The cravings. The shakiness. The languishing cries in the middle of the night. Oh yes, the cries. I have to admit I’m looking forward to the cries. He’ll be begging me to have a nibble of bacon and I’ll just sit there and laugh, reading a copy of Peter Singers’ Animal Liberation (which I shamefully have not yet read) and listening to the Stones wail, ‘You can‘t always get what you want.’ Oh yes, I’m going to be very annoying.
As for you, the general populace, perhaps you would like to join S. and I on our journey through fields of frolicking Tofurkey? What an adventure!