The Vegetarian Discussion

It's that time of year again when the topic of vegetarianism comes up again in our family. Now that the cold winter is behind us (for the most part) we are more inclined to want to get away from meat. Intellectually we are all behind it (okay, maybe except for the 11yo and the 6yo). The problem is much more pragmatic.

You see, I am Busy. Yes, that's Busy with a capital B. When I was working full time back in February and March, I didn't even set foot in a grocery store. There was no time. Dinner was left up to the hubby and the delivery man. Now that I'm back to subbing, I have a little more time for luxuries like grocery shopping...but not much. I have time to shop, barely. I don't have time for clipping coupons, meal planning, and list writing. So in between my many other errands, I stop by the grocery store, grab a cart and weave in and out of the aisles throwing things into the cart.

At this point it is all muscle memory and habit. I can come up with meat-based meals on the spot without a list because I've done that for years. When I am in the grocery store, I can see frozen chicken breasts or ground beef on sale and immediately 4-5 recipes pop into my head and almost simultaneously so do the other needed ingredients and where I can find them in the store. My mental store of vegetarian recipes is much more limited. I mean, I can do Boca Burgers and Mac and Cheese and I'm about spent. Now I'm sure people could comment to this post and say "you could try ...(insert whatever favorite veggie recipe)". I know that there are lots of other vegetarian options and I have cookbooks at home to help me. The point is, they aren't in my head. To get to them I have to sit down with the cookbooks ahead of time, plan my meals, list the ingredients, check what we already have at home, and then shop. That becomes real Work that takes Time.

My husband is getting irritated with me. He has gone back to eating strictly vegetarian a week ago and I keep making meat for dinner. Last night it was frozen chicken breasts in one of those meal in a box kits. You know the kind, put chicken, stuffing mix and seasoning in one pan, cover with a can of sauce and pop in the oven. Five minutes prep, 30 minutes cooking in the oven, and dinner is served. He frowned. He stopped on his way home from work and bought a frozen organic spinach and feta pizza for himself.

I've told him he is welcome to make dinner himself if he doesn't like what I'm making. Right now this is what I have. I'd like to be able to run through the grocery store and pick out vegetarian meal items (preferably a week's worth at a time) the way I can with meat-based items, but I'm not there yet. Sigh.

Maybe I need to watch Fast Food Nation again. That would probably jolt me into action.

Vegetarian Families

Now that our life is getting back onto a more even keel (knock on wood) we are trying to practice vegetarianism more. My 15 year old is the most devout vegetarian in the family. He has consistently been vegetarian since about last April. The rest of us, however, have not been very good at avoiding meat lately. To be honest, we have had to make use of some charitable food sources and have found them to be heavy on the meat. The saying, "Beggars can't be choosers," immediately comes to mind.

But as we have more power to decide for ourselves what we eat, I am trying to merge back onto the vegetarian highway. ;-)

I have a small collection of recipes that I can fall back on. But generally, I have found that most of my veggie recipes don't go over well with the kids. I look at vegetarian websites and vegetarian cookbooks and find recipes that are just not very tasty to kids. Now, as an adult, I often love the recipes. But if I have to listen to complaining during every meal or watch my son's pants slide down on him and see his ribs because he's so thin, I need to find something else.

There especially seems to be a dearth of plain old vegetarian websites. The "in" thing seems to be vegan. Hey, at this point, I'm doing well just to get my kids to cut out meat - I'm not ready to push it.

And I do admit to being more than a little put off at the holier-than-thou tone on some of the websites. Contrary to what some may think, meat eaters are not bad or even stupid. Different people have different opinions. A little more respect for that reality would be welcome, as far as I'm concerned.

Anyway, I've added a few links to my blog over on the right side of the page. I'm hoping to find some good resources to jumpstart our veggie eating again. If any of my readers knows of a good website or can recommend a family-friendly veggie cookbook, please leave me a comment. Thanks!

Camp cuisine

Okay, here's my food recap from our camping trip last weekend.

Friday dinner:

We copped out on dinner on Friday. We didn't get down and get our camp set up until after 6:00, so we knew it would have to be a fast dinner. We really wanted to stay vegetarian as much as possible, but we just couldn't imagine a camping trip without hot dogs over the campfire. We didn't even consider the tofu dogs because we tried those last summer and they were Nasty (with a capital N!). So we just had hot dogs, vegetarian baked beans and potato chips with soft drinks. We followed it up with dessert - what else but smores.

Saturday breakfast:

Saturday morning we were up by 7am and we started the coffee. We've tried different things over the years, but we've found that the best option for camping coffee is Folger's Coffee Singles. We have a huge jug that we fill with water and keep at the campsite for cooking, washing dishes, brushing teeth, etc. We pour some water into a coffee pot and boil it on our propane stove. Pour the boiling water over the coffee singles and brew and we are good to go. For the boys we tried something new this year. We brought several bottles of bottled water and put some in our cooler with ice. I found some of those new "On the Go" packets that are flavorings you can add to bottled water. I bought the orange flavor that has extra vitamin C added. I added packets of that to some bottles of chilled water and the boys had orange drink for breakfast. They loved them and it was sooo easy. It was worth the slightly higher price to have something so easy to use (and it tastes good!).

I made a new concoction for breakfast. This wasn't really even a recipe. I just thought it up myself and threw some things together. In a cast-iron skillet I poured in some canola oil. I'd chopped an onion at home and brought it in a ziploc baggie. I threw the onion into the oil along with about 2/3 bag of frozen hash brown potatoes. It took a really long time, but I fried it up on one burner of the propane stove. (I almost never make fried foods so this was a real "treat" for my family. I wouldn't do it all the time.) Meanwhile, on the other burner I used a non-stick skillet with a little squeezable smart spread (butter-like spread in a bottle) to scramble 5 cage-free organic eggs I'd brought from home. I added a little salt and pepper to both the eggs and the potatoes. Little J used our dutch oven and some aluminum foil to warm up some flour tortillas. To serve, we put a little of the eggs and a little of the potatoes in each tortilla, added some bottled salsa, and rolled them up. We each had one "burrito" and it was delicious and filling.

Saturday lunch:

For lunch we kept it simple with PB&J sandwiches, leftover chips, and some apples I'd brought from home. (The apples weren't a hit though. When I told the kids I had apples, only one was interested. The other two looked at me like I'd sprouted an extra head.) We also had some leftover hot dogs that Big J, Little J, and I had.

Saturday dinner:

We were adventurous again for dinner. We used our dutch oven to make pizza. We lined it with aluminum foil and laid a small boboli bread inside the bottom. (Our dutch oven is so small that we had to get 8" crusts which made small pizzas. We had to make two to feed our crew and probably could have made 4 now that I think about it.) We put bottled pizza sauce on top and spread it around and then added shredded mozzarella cheese. On one of the pizzas I also added fresh mushrooms I'd brought from home. Next time I may try some other toppings as well. Anyway, to use the dutch oven, you put the lid on. You have heated charcoals on a flat base (we used the gravel near the firepit). You set the dutch oven on top of the hot coals and then use tongs to add more hot coals to the lid. You basically create an oven that surrounds the food with heat. You let it sit about 10 minutes or so, checking to see if the pizza is done. Be careful with this step! Our first pizza was perfect, but the second got a little burned on one side from being in a little too long. We finished off with the rest of the smores.

Sunday breakfast:

We made pancakes on our new cast-iron griddle which we used with our propane stove. I'd bought the plastic bottle of bisquick (not very green, I realize) because you add the water directly to the bottle and shake and the batter is ready. Then you just pour the batter from the bottle. We used our squeezable fake butter and a bottle of lite syrup and the same drinks as Saturday. Big J wanted some protein with breakfast so we had some Morning Star Farms sausage links that I cooked on the griddle. They were okay, but I could have done without.

This was a challenging trip because we all worked up to the last minute and had to try to plan around the rest of our lives. Later in the summer when I am not working, I can devote more time to planning our next trip(s). I am still looking for some *good* replacements for hot dogs and chips. Until I find something that works, we'll probably stick with them. :-(