Day 18 Or... In Search of A Tempeh Recipe

The clock is ticking.
The tempeh in my fridge has a sticker on it claiming that I need to use it by the 23rd. That's just a few days away!

So, I need a good tempeh recipe to use and I need that recipe soon.

What is tempeh? Tempeh is made from cooked and slightly fermented soybeans and it's formed into a patty of sorts. It's made from soy like tofu. But according to About.com, unlike tofu tempeh supposedly has a unique and distinct flavor. I'll find out soon enough.

- What did I eat on Day 18?

Breakfast. A juicy pear. Oh how I love pears. They're the most underrated fruit.

Lunch. Kashi GOLEAN Crunch!

Dinner. I admit it. I broke one of my rules. Don't panic; I didn't eat meat.

However, one of my goals during this project was not to have the same dinner twice in a single week. Yet tonight I had vegetarian enchiladas again. If you're counting, I've had them two nights in a row. That's what happens when your recipe makes 10 large enchiladas and you have five tasty ones left in the fridge the next day... you enjoy more of a good thing.

I couldn't let the tastiness go to waste.

In fact, there's even one more left which will probably be lunch tomorrow.

18 days down. 22 to go.

Day 17 Or... I Almost Forgot to Post Today

Today was a busy day.

In fact, it was so busy that I almost completely forgot about writing for this blog today. [Did you notice this was posted at 11:57 p.m. on the 17th?]

Rest assured that I didn't forget about my vegetarian diet though.

Can you believe I'm almost halfway through with the Go Veg Project?
Incredible.

To be honest though, all the reports that I've seen about the crisis in Haiti have been weighing on me heavy this weekend. The devastation is truly catastrophic. At times it seems really odd to give a lot of thought about my specific vegetarian food choices when there are so many in need of simple things like water, food, and medical supplies.


- What did I eat on Day 17?

Breakfast. A glazed donut.

Preview

Lunch. A Morningstar Farms "tomato & basil pizza burger." Thanks to my Burger King/Morningstar Farms experience from a few days ago, I may done with textured vegetable protein burgers for a little while.

Dinner. For dinner, I tried a fantastic new vegetarian enchilada recipe. It's actually new recipe #8. The enchiladas were delicious! Thanks for the recipe Tanna.

Here's how you can make them:

Ingredients:

• 10 fat free flour tortillas
• 16 oz. bag of frozen peppers/onion blend
• 1 16 oz. can of Old El Paso Fat Free Spicy Refried Beans
• 1 10 oz. can of Old El Paso Enchilada Sauce
• 1 Package of Mexican Rice (though I actually used 2 packages)
• 1 1/2 cups of shredded cheddar cheese

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Prepare the rice according its directions. In a large skillet saute the pepper and onion blend until tender. Add the refried beans and cooked rice to the skillet. Then, add a couple tablespoons of the enchilada sauce to the mixture.

Next, spray a 13x9 baking dish (Pyrex) with non-stick cooking spray. Place 3 tablespoons of enchilada sauce into the dish and lightly coat the bottom of the dish. Place about 1/3 of a cup of the mixture into the center of each tortilla. Roll each tortilla and place them seam side down in the dish. Then, pour the remaining enchilada sauce over the tortillas. Next, evenly distribute the cheese on top. Bake for 20-25 minutes. Enjoy!

Who missed having meat? Not me.

Until next time...
17 days down. 23 to go.

Day 16 Or...The Gradual Return of Hunger

Eating is significantly better than not eating. For a variety of reasons.

My recent lack of appetite, due to a very minor episode of feeling sick, has left me with rather short and presumably uninteresting blog posts. Let me sure you that this is not a sign of things to come over the next few weeks of the project. It's just a natural result of a blog centered around my consumption of vegetarian-friendly food.

Luckily today, I returned to my "normal" eating habits.

This morning around 7:30 I awoke with a remarkable amount of energy. For the first time in, I'm not really sure when, I got up to play with and feed Isaiah while Carolyn went back to sleep. We had a lot of fun and I'm sure my lovely wife enjoyed sleeping in a few minutes more.

I went on to make homemade biscuits for breakfast. I realized while I was stirring the dough that I was excited about cooking for the first time in a couple of days, which meant I was excited about eating again. Which, I admit, is a strange thing to be so sincerely thrilled about. It felt good to eat more than one biscuit. Having meat with it, was thankfully, the farthest thing from my mind.

However, by lunch, I had about 30 meal options with meat and only one without.

Carolyn, Isaiah, and I had traveled to visit our good friend Dakota and we decided to choose Subway for lunch. As you know, from the horribly repetitive ad campaign, Subway is home to the $5 footlong. And those options include the meatball sub, the black forest ham, the oven roasted chicken, and the "spicy italian" that features both pepperoni and salami.

What did I order? I ordered their not-so-famous Veggie Delite. To be honest, while it was a little hard to see the three other people at the table bite into their meat-filled sandwiches, I have been a fan of their veggie sub for more than a year. I tried it a good while back when I noticed that by the time I loaded a turkey sub up with lettuce, onions, spinach, pickles, bell peppers, banana peppers, and sweet onion sauce... I couldn't taste the meat anymore anyway. In fact, my longtime enjoyment of Subway's veggie sub was a huge motivator that I could actually survive this Go Veg Project.

And so, after a couple days of not enjoying food, this was like the return of a familiar friend. A friend that you can buy for five bucks and then eat in the company of friends and family. Okay, so it wasn't really like a friend at all.

Yet, I must say, this Veggie Delite (on Italian bread) tasted phenomenal. I'm not sure if my photos really do it justice, but this was also the best looking veggie sub I've ever received at a Subway. It could have been straight out of a commercial.

In the past when I've ordered the Veggie Delite, the "sandwich artist" (which what they're really called by the way) almost always noticeably tries to fight back the confused and befuddled look of "why someone would order a sandwich without meat." Then they typically proceed not to put that many veggies on the "Veggie Delite" because... who would really want to eat all those vegetables?

Very rarely does an employee realize that because there's no meat, I actually want a magnanimous amount of veggies on my sandwich. This sandwich artist, however, defied what had become my expectations of what the veggie sub should look like.

Obviously, I was pleased with the sandwich and couldn't eat much more than half of it. Which is why that "half" also made an excellent dinner. You should try one.

And Subway, if you pay me a large amount of cash, I'll be glad to write more about how much I delight in your Veggie Delite. Otherwise, despite my good experience with it today, I probably won't eat one for a while. As they say, variety is the spice of life.


- What did I eat on Day 16?

Breakfast. I ate two biscuits made using my latest recipe of choice. With strawberry preserves. Mmmmm.

Lunch. The Subway Veggie sub. I ordered a $5 footlong, but no, I didn't sing that song. And believe it or not, I actually couldn't finish it. I also enjoyed Baked Lay's potato chips with it.

Later, Carolyn and I shared a chocolate milkshake at the Dairy Bar in Whitley City, Kentucky. Check that place out if you're ever in the area.

Dinner. The rest of my "Veggie Delite." A little random, and pointless, trivia for you about this sandwich. In his appropriately titled book, "Jared, the Subway Guy," Jared Fogle, ate the footlong Veggie Delite for each and every dinner during his now well-publicized "diet" and exercise program that resulted in his amazing weight loss.

16 days down. 24 to go.
Tomorrow, I'm going to try a new recipe I think.

Day 15 Or... It's Easy to Be Vegetarian If You Don't Have An Appetite

I don't like food any more.

Okay, so that's not exactly true. I think about eating food and I feel much better than I did yesterday, just for the record. I just don't feel up to eating much yet. Which makes it very easy not to eat meat.

I just wish I didn't have salads and yogurts and puddings and such going to waste in the fridge.


- What did I eat on Day 15?

Breakfast. A bite of banana bread.

Lunch. A piece of cheese pizza.

Dinner. Nuts! They were mixed.

Day 14 Or.. I Don't Feel Good

I got sick last night. I sincerely blame Burger King's veggie burger.

In other words, I haven't felt good at all day today.
So, I haven't really eaten anything.

Hopefully, I'll be 100% tomorrow.

- What did I eat on Day 14?

A few bites of bread. That is all.

14 days down. 26 to go.

Day 13 Or... The BK Veggie

What does a vegetarian order at Burger King?

Burger King has had the slogan "Have It Your Way" since the '70s. But what if having it "your way" means having no meat. Can you still order a burger? Absolutely.

In 2004, Burger King partnered with my friends at Morningstar Farms to create the BK Veggie. You guessed it. It's a veggie burger. To the best of my knowledge, Burger King is the only major fast food chain to feature a veggie burger.

My family and I walked into the Burger King and in my head I said, "I have a bad feeling about this." I felt like I was being bombarded with photos and ads for Whoppers and steakhouse burgers, which both sounded really good 13 days into this experiment. But, we were already there.

It felt really odd ordering a veggie burger at the home of the Whopper. I think I even kind of mumbled when I ordered.

I noticed the wrapper for the BK Veggie had an image of two buns with a letter "v" where the beef patty should be. This image was checked to let me and anyone else know that this indeed was the veggie burger.

When I unvielled the burger, I knew that it wasn't fooling anyone. There's no way it looked like anything but a veggie burger. But how would it taste?

Well, I'll spare you the analysis of how it tasted.
Just know that it wasn't good.


- What did I eat on Day 13?

Breakfast. Banana bread. So good. And we're almost finished with all those ripe bananas we received a couple days ago.

Lunch. Lots of the leftover carrot slaw with Club crackers. Tasty!

Dinner. The BK Veggie and Apple Fries.

Just as I predicted, this was a relatively short post today. And that's okay.

13 days down. 27 days to go.

Day 12 Or...Do You Really Want To Know What Jell-O Gelatin is Made Of?

If you don't want to know what Jell-O is made of, stop reading now.

Seriously. If you even enjoy an occassional taste of gelatin, today is probably not the day to read my blog. There are some good recipes in the "What did I eat on Day 12" section, so skip ahead there if you want. You've been warned.

That being said, I have to say that I have always enjoyed Jell-O gelatin. When I started researching vegetarianism for this project, I found out that gelatin was listed again and again in the books I was reading as something I couldn't eat as a part of this experiment. Weird right? I wanted to know why.

I vaguely remember reading a David Crowder book that randomly mentioned that I didn't want to know what Jell-O was made of. But now, I know why Crowder chooses to avoid gelatin. And I can't say I blame him.

I know what you're thinking. "Jell-O isn't meat. Is it!?!"

Well, according to Snopes.com, it kind of is. Jell-O pudding is vegetarian friendly, but Jell-O gelatin has some secret ingredients that the folks at Kraft tend not to publicize.

Gelatin is made from animal bones and hides. The production of gelatin starts with the boiling of bones, skins, and hides of cows and pigs. This process causes the animal tissues to release a collagen full of protein. That collagen is filtered several times, dried, and ground into the powder that is inside the colorful, friendly-looking Jell-O box that you buy at Walmart. It acts as a nice thickening agent that helps the Jell-O Jigglers... jiggle.

This same collagen-producing process is used to make the gelatin that is in the marshmallows that you put in your hot chocolate.

That's food for thought.

- What did I eat on Day 12?

Breakfast. Somehow, for some unknown reason, friends of ours ended up with dozens of ripe bananas. Thankfully, they shared them with us. And what do you do when you end up with about 20 ripe bananas? You eat them before they go bad.

This resulted in new recipe #6: Feniger's Banana Bread. I don't know how Carolyn found this recipe, but I'm so glad she did. It's the perfect banana bread. Not too sweet. No nuts. Very flavorful. Completely scrumptious.

Lunch. I tried the leftover Morningstar Farms Asian Veggie patties again. They weren't any better a second time. I'm not buying those again.

Dinner. I had a variation of a peanut butter and banana sandwich. New recipe #7 is a slight variation of Elvis' Favorite Tea Sandwiches, which is actually a recipe from a Deen Brothers cookbook. Here's my adaptation of their recipe:

Ingredients for Elvis' Favorite Sandwich:

• • 8 slices white or wheat bread
  • 2 bananas, peeled and cut into small slices
  • 1/2 cup JIF "Peanut Butter & Honey"
  • 1 tablespoon honey
  • 1 tablespoon melted butter melted

Directions:

• Using a round cookie cutter, punch circles out of each slice of bread, eliminating the crust. Spread half the circle slices with roughly 1 tablespoon of the "JIF peanut butter & honey" each. Place banana slices on top of each of the "JIF peanut butter & honey" covered circles and mash slightly with a fork. Drizzle each banana slice with a little extra honey. Top with the remaining bread circles.
• Preheat broiler. Transfer the sandwiches to a baking sheet. Brush the tops of the sandwiches with melted butter. Broil about 1 minute or until just golden... but keep an eye on them. They'll toast up really fast. But, if you do it right, they will be beyond delicious.
  

I also made a new recipe I got from my co-worker, friend, and faithful reader Marianne.
New recipe #8 is carrot salad/slaw. Here's her recipe.

Ingredients for Carrot slaw/salad:

• 1 pound medium carrots, peeled
• 1 tablespoon freshly squeezed lemon juice
• 3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
• 2 tablespoons chopped parsley (or tarragon or a combination)
• Salt
  
• Buttery crackers, small biscuits or hot, crusty baguettes, for serving.

Directions:

• Grate carrots into matchstick pieces using a food processor, a mandolin or a sharp knife. Transfer to a bowl. Whisk lemon juice and oil together, pour over carrots, and toss. Add parsley and toss. Add salt to taste. Serve with crackers, biscuits or bread.

I devoured this meal. The toasted peanut butter, banana, and honey sandwich is one of the best things I've ever ate. And as an added bonus, it got rid of a couple more bananas.

And while the carrot slaw didn't wow me with my very first bite, when I scooped lots of it up on a buttery cracker I really enjoyed it. Carolyn called the slaw "refreshing" and she was exactly right... as usual. I found myself eating all the slaw on my plate... twice. It actually got better with each bite. It was a very simple recipe that I'll be sure and make again. Thanks Marianne!

Classes start tomorrow at the University of the Cumberlands, so my blog entries may get a little shorter over the next few days as I get back into my normal routine of teaching. Still, I'll keep on writing if you'll keep reading.

As always, I welcome your comments.

12 days down. 28 to go.