The thing with making (or even looking for) vegetarian recipes is that it makes you realize how much we depend on meat in this country. I mean, I was looking through a recipe book (one of recipes for stuff that you might use a 9×13″ pan for) and it contained all of maybe 10 recipes (out of almost 200) that were completely vegetarian (meaning that I very much consider fish and other seafoods to be meat, as does my vegetarian brother). Of those 10 recipes, about 6 of them were variations of lasagna (one of which I plan on trying tomorrow. My new things is beans. I love beans! They’re great!). And did you realize that places like Applebees and TGIFriday’s serve next to no vegetarian meals, aside from salads where you have the chef’s hold the meat?
The point here is that we rely on meat too much as a food. We eat too few veggies and fruits and the overcompensate with too much meat. Meat takes over our meals and our menus and it’s absolutely ridiculous. Veggies are great! That’s why I’m holding somewhat of a rebellion. A coup d’etat, if you will. Meat should be king in our diets like my brother should be president. (Sorry, Russ.) Meat is good for you, but not in the amounts that we eat it today especially in comparison with how much of…well, of everything else that we eat. (I might also mention that it’s not good for the environment to eat as much meat as we do, but that’s an entirely different topic altogether.)
As a result of this realization, I’ve taken a liking to making vegetarian meals for my brother but making enough so that the rest of us can have some too.
Tonight, I made equal portions of two different variations of Sloppy Joe’s: a meat one and a vegetarian one. When the meat one went faster than the veg one, I wanted to laugh and say, “Well, now you’re gonna have to eat your veggies, huh?” (Just for the record, I put onions and bell peppers in the meat one, so they did get some veg. And there was corn on the table.)
When I stock my own fridge and get my own place, I’m going to install a Meat Monday plan. I’ll be vegetarian 6 days a week. Obviously not on principle, but because we need to learn to eat more veggies and to have them take the center stage, letting meat back down.
And if you were wondering, the vegetarian sloppy joe’s was pretty good. I rather enjoyed it.
It's Charlie, Cooking. 