I can be a vegetarian easily. When I lived by myself I ate very little meat. Now that I live with my boyfriend, I rarely have a day without meat. It always sneaks it's way onto my plate somehow every day. I get very annoyed when I declare a day of the week to be a vegetarian day, but it almost always never works out. We have some kind of meat because he kind of believe that a meal is not a meal without meat. Now I actually keep track of the days that I don't eat meat, when before it was so often, I wouldn't bother to take note.
I've been annoyed and angry that my dietary style has changed since Dave moved in, but I've got to say that we don't eat as much meat as other people might. "We eat like kings," I said the other day as I bit into a mushroom burger. We eat very good food with lots of vegetables, sauces, rices and breads. Meat is somewhere on the top of our food pyramid. Rarely do we have a large chunk of protein covering half of the dinner plate. It's because I push for vegetarian and he pushes back with meat. We meet somewhere in the middle with lots of flavor and lots of salads.
I challenged Dave to Vegetarian Week, that's part of the reason why we had to move Vegetarian Week up a few days. He fought it, complained and nagged about how boring and tasteless it's going to be. Quite the opposite. We've turned National Vegetarian Week into a culinary adventure. It took a lot of planning and shopping, but we've got everything for a week full of flavor and I'm enjoying it a lot.
Day 1
We had cheese enchiladas from Pepe's Restaurant, a place we never been to before. They were surprisingly delicious. I want to put this plate somewhere at the top of my Favorite Enchiladas list.For dinner we fired up the little charcoal grill and had ourselves a feast. We roasted corn and grilled green bell peppers, onions and potatoes. I put some vegetarian chili beans in the solar oven and we had a small bowl on the side. We grilled some portobello mushrooms for burgers with mozzarella cheese, homemade aioli and cilantro. The burgers were better than beef patties. They were so juicy and hearty, all noise and conversation stopped at first bite.
Day 2
I made some French fries, Dave mashed up some chili beans, we heated up some 505 green chile salsa and made chili cheese fries topped with jalapeños, onions, tomatoes and cilantro. It was a guilty pleasure all around.
For dinner we had fried egg plant with hallomi cheese and basil. It's an Aranian dish we decided to try out after looking through a Middle Eastern cookbook. It's very tasty, but the expensive cheese sort of got lost in the strong fresh basil and the savory egg plant. We had these with a side of steamed snow peas.
Day 3
Lunch was very colorful. Salad. Half of a peanut butter sandwich. Caprese salad. My mother always said that good food gives you gas, and man-oh-man, was she right. I can't have PB&J without milk, so I had a cup of it and I felt bloated and gassy all day after this lunch. But everything was so very delicious.
For dinner I dirtied up the kitchen and made a few falafels and dahl.
Day 4
I took to work some leftover dahl and a small bag of vegetables to dip in salad dressing.
For dinner I made a small strawberry and green apple salad and baked up some stuffed bell peppers. Between lunch and dinner my stomach was just not cooperating. In fact, it's been sort of out of wack since I started Vegetarian Week. It's a change from normal foods with breads and meats to a diet with little bread and no meats. My body is finding it hard to adjust so it feels like I'm on some sort of cleanse. I'm sure it will pass but I'm sure that means when I go back to my old ways, I'll have stomachaches again. I should try to keep as much of this healthiness in my diet since I already started to change it.
Day 5
We went to the Third Floor Bistro on the NMSU campus and ordered some vegetarian dishes. I ordered the open-faced pimento sandwich with a side salad. It was pretty good, but very rich and salty this time around.
Dave got the Veggie Po Boy sandwich with homemade chips. The veggies were perfectly grill and took on a nice smoky flavor. The pickles in the little cup were delicious and they had a special spice (allspice, or autumn/pumpkin pie spice) to it that I liked.
Day 6
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