go vegetarian

Well, if you order it from here you’ll see the answer is meat, meat, and oh, more meat.

_{vegetarian my ass. fml.}

that I hate, hate, HATE being a vergetarian?? I do. Now you now.

I wanted to kick off a one month commitment today. I ended up screwing myself over by not getting rid of the ice cream in the freezer last night, though. Without even thinking, I sat down with a book and the last few bites of my Ben and Jerry’s and finished it off. So, DAY ONE was officially sabotaged by my lack of planning. I am glad that I remembered not to drink milk, and remembered that I couldn’t have toast and butter for breakfast, so I’m on the right track.

At least I drink my coffee black.

Part IX

Stouffers Vegetable Lasagna

Awesome. This stuff is the best lasagna I’ve ever had. Instead of marinara they use a white sauce, and it’s almost more casserole than lasagna, but whatever the case, this stuff is terrific. These will now be added to the list of staples that go in the veggie freezer. Seriously guys, even if your a meat eater, try this stuff, it’s really, really good.

:)

Part VIII – Winner, winner, imitation chicken dinner!

THANK AVO!!

These

are fan fricken tastic! They taste better than the chicken you get on a McDonalds salad, thats for damned sure. I have been putting off trying these for a while now, because I knew that I just would not be able to handle that kind of defeat if they were no good and I had to accept the fact that I would never eat chicken again.

But thankfully the meat that tastes like everything can be successfully duplicated. I cooked these up with a little olive oil, and then when they were nice n hot poured in some Tai Peanut sauce, gave it a few swirls, then tossed it on an onion bun with some romaine lettuce and enjoyed. Very, very tasty. Can’t wait to start adding these to damn near everything!
hi ho!

Part VII

These bad boys

Are the highlight of my day!

Okay, so I’ve been doing this for exactly two weeks now. No meat what-so-ever (except the one bite of my volcano burrito that was made wrong)and have noticed a few things worth mentioning.

First of all, this was easier to do than I thought. Typically, my experiences with quitting something have been pretty harsh (i.e. smoking), but this was just a simple casual choice not to eat meat, without any ridiculous withdrawl symptoms. When you think about it, people often make the decision to go with a bagel in the morning instead of the egg mcmuffin, and it’s really no differnt than that. When you make that choice it doesn’t make you all freaked out and twitchy, and this is pretty much the same way, which I guess just kind of suprised me.

Secondly, there is no substitue out there for meat. Period. I’ve been trying to chronicle my menu for the past two weeks, and while some things do taste similar to processed foods (i.e. hotdogs, sausages. etc.) nothing is going to taste like a 1 1/2” thick pork chop cooked on a charcoal grill. Period. Thats just a fact of life. So, if I’m going to remain vegetarian, I’ll have to concede that I will never again be able to enjoy things like that. No way around it. Steaks, chops, crawfish, chicken breast, chicken wings, etc., they all go the way of the do-do if you go the veggie route. It sounds obvious I know, but it’s still kind of a tough pill to swallow.

Third – I hate being a vegetarian. I’ve given it a lot of thought, and man, I really don’t like being a vegetarian. Not even a little bit. Each meal feels like a disappointment, or like when your a kid and you get grounded from a video game but get stuck watching your brothers play and enjoy it while your stuck with a broken GI Joe. Yeah, that sounds about right. Unfortunately though, I don’t think me not liking being a vegitarian is enough of a reason to not be a vegetarian, and that really sucks. I mean, I want to be able to say “Ok, yeah this blows, I’m not doin this anymore, gimme a steak”, but instead it’s more like “Ok, yeah this blows, and it really really blows that I might just have to make myself keep doing this for the rest of my life.” But, it’s like I said in an earlier post; I’m not doing this to be healthy, or because it’s trendy, or whatever. I’m doing it because I can’t justify something dying just because I think it’s tasty. That just isn’t enough of a reason for me. Sooooo, bring on the veggie loafs, and the veggie dogs, and the veggie everything else, because I’m not ready to throw in the towel on my moral beliefs for a simple gain in taste. I might not like eating these things as much as I enjoy a big, rare, steak; but I do enjoy not selling myself or my beliefs out for a simple tasty meal. So here’s to bland meals and self discipline. Hi ho!

Part VI – (dinners; cont.)

Amy’s Veggie Loaf -

Meh, this stuff was okay. Really, it tastes like it’s just turkey stuffing shaped into a rectangle. In fact, I’d be amazed if it werent. But, since I happen to love stuffing, this works out pretty good. I liked it, but I think in the future it would make more sense to spend the 75 cents it would cost to make about 20lbs of stuffing, instead of the almost 4 bucks it cost for this…

Amy’s Stuffed Pasta Shells

These were pretty tastey. It was a littel difficult getting the heating consistency right (i.e. the first coupld of bites had ice crystals on it, and after a quick reheat it was akin to molten lava) but once all that was straightened out it was pretty good. They didn’t look like much at first, but it turned out to be a pretty good sized portion, and the spinach stuff they filled the pasta shells with was nice and creamy and tasted real good, so I’ll probably keep a couple of these on hand.

So, the exchange went a little something like this…

Them: Welcome to Taco Bell may I take your order?

Me: Yeah, would it be possible to get the Volcano burrito with just beans instead of Beef? (Cause I love the volcano stuff Taco Bell came out with)

Them: Yeah, that shouldn’t be a problem. You want to substitute the Beef with the Beans, yeah we can do that.

Me: (insert rest of my order here)

Them: (insert them repeating order here) + “Volcano burrito with beans substituted for beef.

Me: Yip, sounds good.

Them: Please pull around.

So I pull around, pay for my food, unwrap my beautifully spicy bean buritto, take a great big bite, and froze as I suddenly realize I had just been Beefed. Bastards. So here I sit, frozen in my dilemma.

Bad Conscience: Hmmm, well you already took a bite out of it, so technically, you ate meat. You might as well finish it, right, I mean, you wouldn’t want it to g to waste. That would mean that the cow that was killed in order to make that burrito, would have been killed in vain. You don’t want that on your conscience, do you? Just go ahead and finish it, it’s not like it’ll hurt doing it just this once...

Good Conscience: NO! NO! NO!!!!! STOP!!!YOU STUPID FUCKER!! DONT LISTEN TOHIM!! Are you kidding me?!? You take one more bite of that damned thing an you might as well kiss you RELIGIOUS BELIEFS goodbye!! You know damn well you can’t eat it just this once! You’ll be snacking down whoppers and KFC Grilled chicken before the nights over!!!! Run! Throw it away! Do something, anything, just don’t do THAT!!!

Me: Ah crap. this sucks….

so I went back and returned the burrito, and swapped it out for what I had originally ordered. But I just wanted to use this post to say thank you Taco Bell lady, I really enjoyed having to make snap judgments about my moral code and how I apply it because ofyour complete incompetence in performing remedial tasks.

You Bastards…

Part V (Dinners)

Hamburger Crumbles

These things are kind of hit and miss. The first time I tried them was in an omlete. Just popped em into the microwave and then tossed them in with some cheese and jalepeno’s, and it was pretty damn good. Not burger like at all, more like the steak you get in a Subway steak sub. Similar texture, similar taste. So the omlette was really good. But I decided to try the rest of the bag later to make loose meat sandwhiches (and yes,I said loose-meat sandwhiches. Where i come from it’s decidedly rude to call them sloppy Joe’s...)

The sandwhiches didn’t really turn out all that well at all. It seemed lik because the crumbles had time to sit in the Mamwhich, that it got kind of soggy and lost most of it’s taste and the firmness of it’s texture that I liked when I made the omlette. Granted, the girls like it well enough, but I suppose with those two as long as they can make a mess of it while eating they’re happy. So, all in all, I’d say this was about a 6/10. Not the best substitute for burger, but it does seem to work well in some situations.

Pork Riblets

Now Thats what I’m talkin bout! These bad boys definitely delivered. I hadn’t seen these on my previous expeditions to the grocery store, but was very excited when I came upon them tonight. They are exactly like what you would expect to get from a vending machine or a gas station sandwhich selection. The texture is dead on, and I mean come on, once you got the texture right all you have to do is slop enough bbq sauce on it and you can’t go wrong! Right? Right. 10 for 10 on this one. I will definitly keep these in the freezer from now on.

Micheal Angelo’s Vegetable Lasagna

Meh. This goes into the so-so list. I was never a big fan of lasagna, but I figured it woudn’t hurt to try this. It was pretty much the same as other types of frozen lasagna you can get from the market. You can’t really taste the meat in those things anyways so it’s hard to notice much difference. I’d give it a solid C+. Nothing fancy, nothing bad.

I spent another 50 at the grocer tonight on my wa to work so I’ve got all sorts of new not meat things to try ths week to. I’ll keep you guys posted as I go. :)