I am not from Wisconsin but I love cheese more than anyone I know. This is just regular ole parmesan, grated for parmesan popcorn and shaved for a Caesar salad.
A couple of years ago I discovered Corrieri’s Formaggeria in 12 South, and I developed a really bad $20-$30/week gourmet cheese addiction. I have since kicked that habit, but after tasting the best blue cheese ever at The Mad Platter this weekend I think I might fall back off the wagon.
Tonight I was told to leave work a few minutes early because of another snow storm heading our way, and before we even made it to Murfreesboro big fat, white, fluffy flakes were clogging up the windshield.
I made these stuffed shells for dinner tonight. I don’t cook too often (Ian is the chef in our house, and I happily eat his meals and then clean up), but when I do it’s generally some sort of pasta.
These were spinach-stuffed shells with parmesan cheese, basil and garlic. Despite needing a bit less pepper next time, I think the recipe’s a keeper.
Cross-posted at The Accidental Vegetarian
This week we got a great haul from the Avalon Acres CSA. In two boxes we got 12 sweet potatoes, one pumpkin (that I initially thought was an acorn squash), a bag of corn meal (that I initially thought was flour), wheat pasta, pasta sauce, strawberry preserves and green beans. And I ordered two ribeye steaks for Ian.
We ate some of the sweet potatoes today and they are so. freaking. good. I have never been a sweet potato fan until tonight.
We’re still not sure what we’re going to do with the pumpkin, but if we’ve learned anything from this CSA it’s that the Internet is our friend. And that you can never get too many turnips.
I have borrowed a lot of books. I should start reading them.
(Well, except the cookbooks. I can return those to my pal Megan Pacella because I’ve decided I’m going to buy the Saving Dinner the Vegetarian one myself. It’s a great vegetarian cookbook.)
After my last post about watching Food Inc. and how I was doing with vegetarianism, I really started to think about what Ian said about me not doing the world any favors by eating the genetically modified vegetables sold in the grocery store.
And so I signed us up for a CSA (community supported agriculture). Every two weeks until Spring I will head over to Climb Nashville to meet the truck and pick up our share of locally, naturally grown vegetables (and occasionally pastas, jams and sauces, or whatever else they decide to throw in the box). The farm is called Avalon Acres, and is based in Hohenwald, Tenn. They also have numerous Amish farmers who bake, raise free-range animals for meat and grow vegetables for them as well.
Besides the peace that comes with knowing that I’m eating non-genetically modified food, I feel good that I’m helping out a local farm—and all the benefits that come with that (supporting local economies, cutting down on emissions caused by trucking food thousands of miles, etc.).
And it’s exciting not knowing exactly what we’re going to get each time I go to pick up. Last week was our first shipment, and it was a cornucopia of vegetables I did not recognize. (Thanks to everyone on Twitter who responded to my queries instead of just laughing at my dumb ass.) As it turns out, we received turnips (large and regular), turnip greens, white radishes, a bunch of still unidentified greens, peach preserves, canned green beans, homemade pasta sauce and homemade pasta. I was so stoked so see that big-ass bag of pasta in the box—I had been hoping for that the most since I read what we *might* get when we signed up.
The other thing that’s cool about the CSA is that we have had to learn how to cook new things. Neither Ian nor I had ever had (let alone cooked) turnips before, and while we knew how to cook greens, we didn’t realize how bitter they are fresh from the farm compared to in a can (how we normally eat them). Ian got a little creative the other night and roasted some white radishes and turnips, and they were SO GOOD. I think our green-cooking process needs a bit of refining, but they were still pretty tasty, so I think we’re getting there.
I wish I would have realized how easy it was to participate in a CSA, because I would have done it years ago. If you are concerned about the Monsanto-tainted food you’re buying from the grocery store or just want to support a local farm, I strongly suggest you look into Avalon Acres’ CSA program. It’s very affordable, super easy to pick up (they have numerous pickup locations twice a week throughout Nashville, Franklin and even one in Murfreesboro) and the people have been great (I really grilled them before I signed up, and I appreciate Angel answering all of my crazy questions).
And don’t worry, carnivores—you can buy free-range (and sans hormones and antibiotics) beef, chicken and pork from them, too.
I did it. I actually did it. I mean, I knew I would, I guess I just thought it would have been more difficult. Besides barbecue, turkey was one of my favorite meats in the entire world. Thanksgiving turkey, specifically.
But this year, despite a table full of two different kinds of Thanksgiving turkey, I didn’t even crave it. As Ian’s family gathered around the table filling their plates, they probably noticed me sitting there in silence for a few rare minutes. I was staring down the turkey, waiting for it to transform into some kind of miracle food, looking all tasty and magnificent, and start calling my name. But it didn’t. It just sat there, looking like the corpse of a dead bird raised squashed in captivity that never had a chance.
I happily ate the side items.
At dinner with Ian’s dad and dad’s wife later that night, turkey and ham were served again. We were at Maggiano’s family-style Thanksgiving, though, where you order several different dishes in addition to the turkey and ham. I was grateful that four-cheese ravioli and several non-meat side dishes were available and everyone agreed we could select them.
I had been preparing myself for Thanksgiving almost since I initially started eating vegetarian, thinking it would take a miracle to resist turkey since I’m not exactly Mrs. Willpower. But I underestimated myself, apparently. Sitting there in front of the turkey and ham at both dinners, it seemed perfectly natural to not even consider eating them.
That makes me incredibly happy. It makes me feel like I’ve reached a milestone—that if I no longer worry about struggling with missing a certain meat dish, maybe I’ll really be able to do this. It also makes me more confident that I am doing the right thing for my body—for myself in general, I suppose.
And hopefully some turkeys appreciate it, too. :)
Several people have asked me how “the vegetarian thing” has been going, so I thought it might be nice to post an update here. As a recap, I’ve not eaten meat since Aug. 10, 2009, and I made the conscious decision to not eat it anymore on Aug. 13, 2009. (For three days I had just accidentally not eaten it. I wasn’t actually trying to avoid it.)
For the first month or so, my biggest problem was the gassiness that comes with eating vegetarian. Beans are a great source of protein and I was eating a lot, and I guess my body just wasn’t used to it. So I hit the simethicone hard, and things have pretty much worked themselves out now. I do still take simethicone after I eat a meal that mainly consists of beans, just to do everyone around me a favor.
After about six weeks, I realized I had gained about five or six pounds. Whether it’s my scale or my body, my weight always fluctuated by a pound or two, usually coming in at 124 or 125 pounds. Now I’m a constant 130. Which I suppose isn’t really that bad, seeing as how I’m 5’8″. But there are a few shirts I can’t wear anymore, and I’ve had to relegate a few pairs of pants to the “weekend” pile, if you know what I mean.
At first I was pretty upset about the weight gain, but in all honestly I feel really good. I don’t feel fat, and if I have to go out and buy a few new pairs of pants, oh well. There are bigger things in my life I could spend my time worrying about, and five pounds really just don’t seem worth it. Even at 125 I felt like I needed to tone a bit, and I still do, so I’ll probably end up using the gym membership I have until February. Maybe. I’ve had it for a few weeks and haven’t gone, though, so we’ll see.
As far as the difficulty in not eating meat, there really isn’t any unless I’m super starving. And even then it’s not that I miss meat, it’s just that I feel like I’m on the verge of a low-blood sugar crash and it would be so much easier to stop at McDonald’s and grab a cheeseburger instead of going home and fixing spinach or a veggie burger.
Some people have suggested that instead of keeping with the vegetarianism, I instead seek out locally grown beef, chicken and pork so that I don’t have to worry about the way they’re treated or the hormones that are pumped into them. And while I think that is a great way for meat eaters to get their food, I just don’t think it would work for me. I know myself, and that would be a slippery slope. It would not be a stretch for me to be out at a restaurant and order a meat dish just because I was a meat eater again. Years ago I stopped eating beef after I read My Year of Meats by Ruth Ozeki (a great book, by the way—one of my favorites), but it didn’t take more than a few months before I fell off the wagon after numerous dinners with friends and family members where beef was served.
Ian and I just watched Food Inc. tonight, and I will say that if I wasn’t a vegetarian already I would have made the commitment tonight after seeing that film. I know there are a lot of problems with genetically engineered vegetables, and I understand, as Ian put it, that I’m not doing the world any favors by eating them.
But I do know that I am not encouraging the inhumane treatment of chickens, pigs and cows. I am not responsible for the way they are crushed to death, made to walk on broken legs or thrown into grinders while still alive and crying, scared and helpless.
And like I’ve told a few people who have told me that my not eating meat doesn’t matter: Just because I can’t fix the entire problem with our food industry doesn’t mean I shouldn’t stop eating meat. Not being able to do everything perfectly doesn’t mean I should ignore what feels right to me.
It’s been a little over a week now with my foray into vegetarianism, and I’m calling it so far, so good. I haven’t really had any cravings until this morning when I opened the refrigerator door and smelled the pastrami lunch meat (Ian’s). It smelled good. Really good. But then I thought about how eating a piece, just one piece, would set me back so far; and about how horrible I would feel for letting myself down; and about the poor cows and they way they are treated. And I closed the door and walked away.
Growing up with a father who ran a Jewish deli all of my life (and continues to do so), I was often lectured on where certain cuts came from on the cow. And, on the rare occasion I accompanied him to work, I was taken into the giant walk-in freezer with random cow products hanging around. That always freaked me out. I’m kind of surprised I didn’t give up meat sooner.
Or maybe I shouldn’t be. Maybe I never questioned my ethics of eating meat because without meat, my father would not have had a job. Although, maybe without meat my father wouldn’t have had a job so he would have gone to college or chosen a different profession, one that he wouldn’t have hated so much. Maybe if he had had a different job, one that he liked, he wouldn’t be so bitter and hateful about everything.
I doubt it, though.
ANYWAY, so I’ve not eaten meat in about a week and I have to say I feel pretty good. I’m probably eating less, which really wasn’t my intention since I’m not trying to lose weight. But while I’m eating less, I’m eating healthier. Quality over quantity, right? And despite being woken up about four times since 4 a.m. this morning, I feel quite alert—definitely not like I’ve been trudging through my day. Although, I don’t really know if I can credit that to my lack of meat/increase in healthier foods or to the fact that sometimes I just have good days where amount/quality of sleep just doesn’t seem to matter.
I also will say that I think for the first time in my life I understand how people trying to lose weight feel, and I have developed a great sympathy for the struggle someone has when telling themselves “no, don’t eat that, you know that you shouldn’t.”
I know my reason for telling myself “no” is different, but opening that refrigerator door this morning and thinking “No you should not eat that pastrami” was the first time I’ve ever had to really exert willpower with food. It was a revelation of sorts, I guess.
I suppose I am lucky in that sense, but in reality it wasn’t that hard to say no. And I think that’s what really tells me I’m doing the right thing for myself.
I feel like I’m trying to quit smoking.
Yesterday was my first meal at someone else’s house as a vegetarian, and it was at Ian’s dad’s house. They were gracious; his dad’s wife Tracie got some portabella mushrooms and we tried a new recipe—vinaigrette, rosemary and crumbled blue cheese—that was awesome. Even Ian’s dad, who seemed skeptical at first, loved it.
I think this could work.
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