The Vegetarian Adventure.

So we've been slowly converting over to being completely vegetarian. We are vegetarian 6 days a week and I use one day a week to use up some of the meat in my freezer. We have stew meat and a chicken and 2 gallon sized bags of smoked turkey stock left. I plan on using the stew meat tomorrow. Since Trevor originally was okay with eating locally family farmed meat, I had ordered meat from my milk source. However, as I brought the meat to the car, Trevor said he wasn't going to eat it and he didn't want to eat any meat at all. Fine. I did explain that I had bought this meat and I wasn't about to throw it away and so we would just go through it slowly. Otherwise, we have pretty much been vegetarian.

I don't actually remember if I blogged this, but I bought a vegetarian cookbook called "Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone" by Deborah Madison. It is a fabulous book and was everything I was looking for. I wanted a book that had REAL recipes (as opposed to recipes using way too many fake meat products or tons of bean stew recipes), used real ingredients I could find at a regular grocery store, and had everything in it I could ever want. This book is almost like a vegetarian version of the Nourishing Traditions book- without the quotes in the sidebars. It's got recipes for stocks, salad dressings, sauces and then everything else from salads, to main courses.. everything. And everything looks good while being relatively easy to make. I read a review on the book and someone said that this was a recipe book that just happened to be vegetarian. And it's exactly true. So we've been using the book a lot.

The first week we were veggie, we ate stuff like pizza, black bean burritoes, tofu hotdogs. This week we have had seasoned pinto beans on corn tortillas with cheese, lettuce and salsa (I fried, but did not make the tortillas). Baked eggs with potatoes and swiss chard stems (which were a hit with everyone and I wish I had made more!), black bean soup with avacado and smoked cheddar, tofu in peanut sauce and soba noodles with asparagus, scallions and some really tasty soy sauce/sesame marinade. Tonight we had coconut dal over rice with homemade flat bread. Oh, and ray did bring home pizza one night. So we've definitely been eating well and everything has been REALLY easy to make. Trevor was not a fan of the asian noodles with asparagus but he adored the tofu in peanut sauce. And that was all of like 15 minutes of cooking.

So we've been eating well. I've been making what I jokingly call "poor man's stock" where I save all my vegetable scraps and when I have enough, make stock. I did this for chicken stock as well, but I found I needed more veggies with straight up veggie stock and nothing gels like I am used to having with chicken stock. I've also been inspired to get back to baking bread- for a while I stopped, then I used a bread machine, then I stopped and bought bread again. But nothing tastes quite like a load of bread baked in an oven. I'm no expert artisan bread baker or anything, but I can make a passable daily loaf of bread.

So it's been good. I like being vegetarian again. I'm definitely a healthier vegetarian this time around, though! Trevor gave me that kind of kick I needed as I have been personally contemplating going veggie again for a while. Trevor's liking the food, the girls are liking the food and even Ray likes the food (but Ray will eat anything, he's certainly not a picky eater). Below is a bread picture. I took a picture of our dinner, but while it was good, it wasn't exactly appetizing looking, so I didn't post it. heh.


Bread I baked today. A basic loaf of white bread. Usually I make whole wheat or 75% whole wheat bread but I felt like a basic sandwich bread today.