Meat Replacement

There are so many different types of meat replacements out there, it is easy to get overwhelmed when you go shopping. Yves, Veggie Patch, tofu, meatless chicken and beef strips, Tofurkey…..so many choices. Even when you decide on one, it’s still tough to figure out what to get. Yves has both Veggie Dogs and Tofu Dogs. I asked my husband what was the difference between the two (I was of the belief that any meatless hotdog was a veggie dog) and his explanation was  ‘One is tofu, the other is not.’ Thanks for that clarification……(I shouldn’t be too hard on him. He has been fantastic with my cutting out meat.)

Other than the smoked tofu, I have only tried one thing and that is the Veggie Patch falafel balls. They were so yummy! They were easy to prepare, full of flavor, not dry as a shoe, I would definitely buy them again. I have the Veggie Patch garlic portobella burgers at home that I am supposed to be trying tonight. They look okay, but I am still a little scared. I really don’t like the idea of having a product that is trying to pass its self off as another product. With the falafels, they were not trying to be meat.

I get that if I am not having meat then I should not have meat, but if I am making a pizza and want to add something other than vegetables, is the Yves Veggie Pepperoni a good choice? Or does it have a weird texture/flavor? If I want to have some friends over for a barbecue, I can make tasty beef burgers for them, but do I choose between the Money’s veggie burgers or the Veggie Patch ones? The same with chicken. Yves has a ‘mock chicken’ breast that on the package looks rather tasty, but there is also another one that I have seen at the Community Farm Store (Gardein) that looks good too. Are they both good? Or would I be best to stay away from them? Yves also has a ‘chicken kabob’ that looks kind of like cat food that has been rammed on a stick. It doesn’t look too appetizing, and I haven’t had anyone reccomend I try it, but maybe it’s good?

Now I see they have stirfry tofu in sauce, and stirfry beef and chicken strips, along with chicken fingers. Are any of these tasty?

While I am expanding on my vegetarian cooking skills, I have discovered that I know absolutely nothing about tofu. I have been told a handful of good tofu recipes, and everyone just starts with ‘You need a block of tofu……’ but when I went to the store, there were about a million different types. Flavored, not flavored, dessert, firm, extra firm, smoked, fried…..when do you use which tofu and for what? If I have a super tasty recipe I want to make sure I’m getting the right thing,  but have no idea when to use what and don’t want to botch up a recipe because I got the extra firm tofu when what I needed was medium firm tofu.

I have also been looking for some new vegetarian cookbooks to add to my collection. So far I have the Rebar cookbook, the Kind Life diet (which has some yummy recipes in it) and there’s another one I have, but forget the title. Does anyone have a favorite vegetarian cookbook they absolutely would die without? I’m open to vegan too….I will try anything as long as the recipes are good and preferrably ones that use normal things I have at home already. Cookbooks that require a $50 grocery shop to make one recipe have thier place in my life, but for everyday meals I need something easy to make and without outrageously expensive ingredients.

If anyone has any reccomendations for either the meat replacement or cookbooks I’d love to hear them!!

Drunken Beans

What you need:

1 medium onion, diced

1 can navy beans, drained and rinsed

2 cloves of garlic, minced

salt and pepper to taste

1/2 cup white wine

About 12 leaves of fresh oregano, torn or roughly chopped

What to do:

Saute the onions and garlic in butter until the onions are kind of see-through. Add the wine and reduce until there is a bit left, but it’s not soupy. Add the beans and oregano and heat through. Season with salt and pepper, and add more wine if necessary.

Meat Free for 3 weeks!!

Today marks the date of 3 weeks meat free. I am loving every minute of it. I am trying so many new foods that I would have never tried before, and while I don’t necessarily love all of them, it’s been such an experience in trying them all.

This past weekend I decided to try a new recipe for dinner. *Note – Never, ever try anything new while studying for an exam.* It sounded good enough, open faced fish tacos. It also sounded super easy, and I figured I could do it. While studying.

I started off by taking my study book into the kitchen with me, thinking I could study and saute at the same time. It was going well (at first.) I put the butter in the pan, added my garlic and onions, skimmed the information I was trying to study, stirred my onions…things were going well. Until I got to a section of the book that has caused me all sorts of trauma, for some reason it is just not making sense in my head. This caused some frustration. And then I noticed the smell coming from my stove.

I turned around only to find that my onions that had been happily bonding with the butter, were now dark brown and crispy. In a not good way. I burst into tears, scraped them into the garbage and started chopping new ones. I sauteed the new ones with tears streaming down my cheeks, and began to cut up the fish needed to marinate. It was at this point my husband came in, poured me a large glass of wine and proceeded to watch in amazement as I made an entire meal while crying. He tried to console me and tell me that it wasn’t that bad, that I would figure it out, but it didn’t help any. I was destined for failure, both with studying and with dinner. Nothing he could say or do was going to fix either of them. All he could do was pour more wine.

The dinner turned out okay, the studying for the exam not so much. The best part of the dinner was the bean dish (recipe to follow) that you put on the taco, and then topped with the fish. I could eat that pretty much any day of the week. I am learning to incorporate beans into more of my meals, and am always on the lookout for fun things to do with them.

Anyone have any recipes they want to share?

Carob

Never having tried carob before, I thought that it was going to be kind of a….well, fake chocolate. In the way that Splenda is a fake sugar. Yesterday my husband and I had coffee at the Garage, and decided to be brave and share a vegan brownie. (The girl working said they were amazing.) What I was expecting and what I got were two totally different things. I expected something extremely dry (hello….no eggs, no milk!!) and not chocolatey (no milk chocolate) and to not really be good. I was so wrong.

These had to be by far the best brownies I have EVER HAD. Considering my sweet tooth, I have had a lot of brownies. They were light and fluffy, really chocolatey, the icing was creamy and sweet but not sickeningly sweet, I could go on and on about how wonderful these brownies were.

I went home and checked my vegetarian/vegan cookbooks to see if there was a recipe for them and success! There was. The only problem? The recipe calls for carob. ‘Blech.’ I thought.

Anyhow, I marched into the market and asked one of the staff about carob. What it is, what it tastes like, and she was kind enough to give me a sample. For anyone who has not had carob, it is really quite tasty. It is almost like a roasted chocolate, but with a bit of a different texture at the end. Now, I am one of those people who is very texture-oriented. I can eat pretty much anything, provided that it has an okay texture. This didn’t bother me at all! I noticed a difference, but if I hadn’t known what it was, I would have thought it was just a kind of different textured chocolate with kind of a nutty taste to it.

I got a small bag and am trying the brownie recipe, they are in the over baking as I type. They look okay. They smell okay. They have not burst into flames yet (while I can cook pretty much anything, my baking skills are somewhat tragic) and I am looking forward to seeing if they taste as good as they smell!

Switching up my way of eating I am experiencing so many things that I normally would not….things that I would normally overlook or pass up because it’s just not the normal thing for me. Hence, I have attempted baking. With soy milk and carob no less!

Goodbye Sugar – Take 2.

Yesterday was to be my first day of no sugar. It was a failure of epic proportions.

I got to work and there was a plate of cookies, I figured that one wouldn’t hurt. I got to my desk and a coworker had left me a delicious, fudgey, chocolately brownie. At that point, the day was a write off. (The brownie was excellent though. So worth it!!)

Today I am starting over again. I talked to my chiropractor about cutting out sugar, he has suggested I speak with a nutritionist to help figure out the best way of doing this for me, since I am making such a major change to my diet. I’ve got a call in….now I wait.

I already feel crappy, and I’ve only been awake for 3 hours. Normally I start my day off with coffee (2 sugars) and cereal, and another coffee on the way to work (more sugar.) Today I have had no sugar. I feel kind of on edge….and I can only imagine it will get worse as the day wears on. I have been told to expect a week of ups and downs while I go through sugar detox, which (becasue of my extreeeeme love of sugar, is expected to be worse than meat detox)

Wish me luck. Hopefully I don’t go completely crazy!!

Goodbye Sugar

*Big Sigh*

I have been told that I need to cut sugar out of my diet. This was part of the plan all along, I just didn’t expect it to happen so….suddenly. I was hoping for a gradual cutback, but apparently this is not to be. Sugar and I have an extremely close relationship. There is nothing that makes me happier than a  bag of sours, except maybe 2 bags of sours. I adore sugar. So to hear that I now have to cut it out makes me extremely sad.

I think back to meat withdrawal, and that wasn’t exactly a pleasant experience, which is odd considering I have never been a big meat eater. I found not eating meat to be a bit of a challenge at first, but now that I have settled into a non-meat routine, it’s a much smoother path. Until now. Now I have to go through sugar detox…I cannot imagine a life without sugar. Sugar is what got me through meat detox. What will get me through sugar detox?The thought brings tears to my eyes. (Okay, maybe I’m exaggerating, but you get the point)

Does this mean I can’t have things with sugar in it? Pretty much everything has some type of sugar in it, but is this the end of cookies forever? What is there out there that is sweet, tasty, and that I can substitute for candy? My husband suggested apple chips and dried fruit….will that be enough?

Today is day 1 of no sugar. Coffee this morning sucked. Coffee with soy milk and no sugar. Blech. Tomorrow will be the same. What is a good replacement for sugar? Maple syrup? Splenda? Sweet and Low? Is there anything out there that I can replace sugar with that actually tastes good and not icky? What are my options? Does anyone out there use some kind of natural sweetner that they think rocks and want to tell the world (or at least share with me????)

Giving up sugar is going to be way harder than giving up meat. Wish me luck!!

Eat Local!

One of the things that switching my diet up has taught me is the benefit of eating locally. I will admit, I have, on occasion, run into Walmart to do the one-stop shop thing. I come out with bread, milk, cheese, eggs, cleaning products, chicken, steak….you get the picture. While it is convenient to be able to do this, how does it compare to buying local products and supporting local businesses?

We live in one of the most beautiful places, and have so many resources around us, yet when it comes to choosing what we eat, many of us default to places like Walmart or Superstore becasue it is cheap and convenient. I understand this completely. But how can you compare the produce in Walmart to that which you can get at say, Providence Farm?

One of my favorite things to do on a Saturday morning is head downtown to the outdoor farmer’s market.  http://www.marketinthesquare.net/index.html In the summer they have pretty much anything you could ever need! And the prices are reasonable too, considering a lot of it is organic, and all of it is local. Check out thier website at http://www.marketinthesquare.net/index.html. You can get coffee from Peaks Coffee, a small coffee roasting company located right here in Duncan (http://www.peakscoffee.com/home.shtml) that in my opinion, makes the best coffee ever. They have such a fantastic variety of beans to choose from, and it the coffee doesn’t have that burnt aftertaste that some of the larger coffee companies’ coffee has.

There are so many local organic farms that bring thier produce out, I don’t even know where to begin. Providence Farms and Gamboa Greenhouse are just 2 of the many that come to mind, 2 that I actually remember the names of, but there are so many more. You can get fudge at the market, fresh baked bread, muffins, cookies, and if you like a good cheese, I reccomend Little Qualicum Cheeseworks. http://www.cheeseworks.ca/index.php I am by no means a cheese nut. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy a good piece of cheese, but I’m not one of those hard core, die-hard cheese lovers. The cheese from Little Qualicum Cheeseworks could easily convert me into one. Especially thier marinated Sunshine Feta. It’s marinated with bay leaves, sundried tomatoes, garlic, rosemary…..it’s the one cheese I can’t live without. I put it on everything. Salads, in my eggs, wraps, pasta, pizza, you name it! Another favorite of mine is Golda’s Pesto. (www.gopesto.com) This is another thing I put on anything I can, from grilled cheese to pasta, potatoes, mixed in mayonnaise for a tasty spread or dip, the possibilities are endless!! And, most of the stands have a nice selection of tasters, so you can actually try what you are going to purchase, rather than buy it and get home and realize that it’s not what you want. Also, where else can you pick up eggs that were laid by free run or free range chickens just that morning?

Summer is on it’s way, which means fresh and local produce will be available by the truckload. What if we all were to get 50% of our produce from local sources, rather than from the big box stores? The cost difference would be minimal (if any) but  support for your local farmers would be huge, and knowing that you could actually walk through the garden where your carrots and potatoes came from, to me makes all the difference.

Easy Ground Round Vegetarian Chili

What you will need:

1 package of Mexican Ground Round

2 small onions

1 can of sliced mushrooms, or about 1/2 a pound of fresh sliced mushrooms

2 cans of tomato soup (you will also need 2 cans of water)

about 2-3 tbsp chili powder

1 tbsp cumin

1 can of diced tomatoes

1 can of black beans (drained and rinsed well)

1 can of kidney beans (drained and rinsed well)

1 can corn niblets (or about 1/2 cup fresh or frozen)

Any other veggies you think would go good in chili. I sometimes add zucchini, peppers, carrots, whatever you think would go good.

What you Do:

Dice your onions and saute in a bit of olive oil or butter until soft and kind of see-through.

Add your mushrooms (if fresh saute until cooked) and tomatoes, beans, corn, 2 cans of soup, 2 cans of water, spices and ground round. Stir, and cook over medium heat for about 2 hours.

If you like it hot, add some hot sauce or some spicy peppers. I like to add a bit of chipotle puree to mine, it gives it a bit of a kick without being overpoweringly hot.

**Also works well as a slow cooker recipe, and requires much less effort. Dump everything (except Ground Round) into the slow cooker and cook on low for 6 – 8 hours. Add the Ground Round about an hour before you will be eating, and let it heat through.

Is it Hard to Give up Meat?

I am just coming up to the end of my second meat free week, and have had a few people ask if it is hard to go from eating meat for 31 years to not eating it at all.

In a way it is, and in a way it isn’t. For me, the hardest part was making the decision that this is something I wanted to do. I mean, I knew it was something I wanted to do, but as it was a complete lifestyle change and a commitment to something I wasn’t 100% sure I could do, that was the scary part. Meat is convenient. Meat is easy. There have been countless times when either myself or my husband has been rushed to make dinner, and it is so easy to marinate a chicken breast or grill a steak. Throw in a baked potato and a salad, and you have a meal. Not having that requires a little more planning, and I will admit, there are nights when I get home later than normal and I have no idea what to make for dinner, it’s 7:30, I am hungry, and am at a complete and total loss as to what to have. One of these nights was the horrible miso soup incident, the other I had a veggie sandwich.

I have found that meal planning helps with this, it helps a lot. I figure out what I will be having for the week, ususally on a Sunday afternoon I will sit down with my cookbooks and see what I can find to try. I try and find at least one thing that will make enough for 2 meals so I can rely on the leftovers for either lunch or dinner the following day.

The other thing that that was a concern to me (before researching vegetarian eating, of course) was that vegetarian cooking was extremely time consuming, and that you ate a lot of wierd stuff. Like hemp and quinoa, couscous and brown rice, beans, lentils, and countless other things that I am now trying. I have a bit of a background in cooking, but never really used any of those items to cook with in any of the restaruants I have cooked in. It turns out that while vegetarian may initially seem intimidating and scary, once you get the basics and begin to try different things, it is actually quite easy. Brown rice is super easy to make in a rice cooker (use the same proportions on the bag of rice for stovetop cooking) and couscous is something you can throw together in 15 minutes. Beans can be soaked, cooked and added to pretty much anything (my husband added them to our spaghetti sauce the other night!) and in a pinch, Ground Round can be turned into a tasty vegetarian chili. (recipe to follow)

I still see pictures of steaks and hamburgers, and will think ‘wow, that looks tasty!’ but that is followed by ‘but I don’t eat that anymore’. It’s not even in a sad way, like I feel like I am missing out on anything, it’s just kind of a realization that meat is no longer part of my diet. I have no desire to eat beef or chicken or pork, and the idea of a hamburger kind of turns my stomach at the moment. It’s almost like it has taken on a life of its own inside my body.

My husband and I went for coffee this morning at the coffee shop in front of the organic market, and he asked if I was really feeling better than before, when I had meat on a regular basis. I told him that I felt amazing, that I wished that I had done this a long time ago, and while I didn’t expect him to understand, I felt like my insides matched my outside. It’s a happy feeling….one that I hope gets better the longer I continue on this journey.

Miso and Mustard

I decided that I would try 2 new things this week. I bought both of them sometime last week but haven’t actually had a chance to give them a try. The first thing is aka miso. The  girl working at the Community Farm store where I bought it from told me that the cafe uses it for thier miso gravy, and that the gravy is delicious to no end. I was convinced! The second product is a orange chipotle mustard (also purchased at the Community Farm Store) but it is made by a small company called Hot Chick Spice Company in Cobble Hill. They also make an amazing chocolate and wine sauce, but I will save that for another post.

The mustard was easy. It’s mustard! What can you NOT do with it? I used mine on a veggie sandwich after being stuck in traffic for 3 hours getting home. By the time I got home at 8pm, I was done. For dinner I ended up throwing together a sandwich with some fresh organic tomatoes, cucumber, red pepper, some really tasty swiss cheese, broccoli sprouts, and this orange chipotle mustard. I also had a glass of wine with this, and let me just say, for those of you who think that wine does not go with sandwiches, I strongly disagree. This mustard is kind of spicy and sweet at the same time, but it’s not overpoweringly either. It’s not super mustardy either, like an overpowering mustard. It would be good on so many things…it would be fantastic on a veggie burger, you could mix it with a sweet and sour sauce and brush it on prawns, good with chicken or steak (for the meat eating population!) and I’m sure it would be good to add to a stirfry of some sort too! The Hot Chick Spice Company has a website (www.hotchickspicecompany.com) that provides lots of tasty recipes too. For those who are a little more daring, they also have a spice rub called duqqa, a salt and sesame mix called Gomashio and that deadly chocolate wine sauce. The chocolate wine sauce I would not hesitate to use as a festive holiday beverage, the way some people use gravy.

Now, the miso. Not entirely as successful as the mustard. You see, I have never cooked with miso. I have had encounters with miso soup in sushi restaruants, the stuff that comes with the few squares of tofu, some spring onions and maybe a bit of nori cut in. It’s tasty enough, kind of that sweet but slightly salty flavor. On Wednesday after getting home late yet again (this time due to puppy training classes) I decided I would make myself a cup of miso soup. When I bought it the girl told me ‘Just put a spoonful of the miso paste in a cup, add some hot water and you have instant miso soup!’ This sounded easy. I figured I could handle it.

I cracked open the container, and took a spoonful of the paste. It’s really quite thick, and having never used miso before, I had no idea how concentrated it truly is. I put the miso in the cup, added my hot water, stirred it up, smelled it (yep, it smelled like the stuff I get at the sushi shop) and thought I had done good, until I tasted it.

It turns out that miso paste is super concentrated, and you don’t need a lot. I put one heaping teaspoonful in my average sized mug, I could have done with about a quarter of what I put in. The soup I had made was extremely salty, very miso-y, and while it was nice to have something warm, trying to drink it was a bit difficult due to the overwhelming salt content. I made it through about 1/3 of the cup, and then admitted defeat. Next time I know, only add a bit of miso paste. This is something I should have known to begin with, I am forever telling my husband when he is cooking that it’s easier to add things rather than try and take them out. I could have added more water, but would have probably ended up with the equivalent of a bathtub of soup.

I have a recipe for miso grilled scallops that I am looking forward to trying, it gives me specific measurements of miso to use, which I am sure will make this a successful recipe.

For dinner that night I ended up making a brulee’d grapefruit in exchange for the miso soup, and it was delicious. To make this is super simple. Take 1 grapefruit, cut it in half. Top it with some brown sugar and broil it for about 5 minutes, until the brown sugar gets all melty. Then eat it. You get the warm, yummyness of the brown sugar, but the cold and almost sour-ness of the grapefruit. So good!

All in all, the food adventure is going well. Sure, there have been a few hiccups, (my husband trying to ‘help’ and adding black beans to my spaghetti sauce, the miso fiasco) but there have also been a lot of really good things too. The mustard, my discovered love for black beans providing they are not in a spaghetti sauce, couscous (so easy to make!) and just learning about the different options out there.

The next food experiment: Soy Nova Smoked Tofu.

What do you do with smoked tofu? Any ideas?