08.08.11_Smart "Sausage"

Sunday morning Phillip really wanted pancakes. I didn't have any mix in the apartment so he went out to buy some. We typically shop at Safeway but we had not looked to see what kind of vegetarian products they carried. I had him check to see if they had any "sausage" that we could have with our pancakes. Surprisingly, Safeway did carry a fair amount of products considering how tiny the store is. I have a hard time finding chicken nuggets at this store but of course they would have vegetarian sausage. I guess this is what I should expect living in Dupont Circle.

Phillip ended up buying the LightLife Italian Style Sausages. LightLife also has breakfast sausages but they didn't carry them at Safeway though we did find them at Whole Foods later. We ended up using only two of the sausages for breakfast so we decided we could cook up the other two for dinner on Monday. For Phillip, a plan vegetarian sausage, on a dry hot dog roll, and a side of fries. After a few bites he ended up melting a slice of American cheese (or should I say cheese food?) on his to make some kind of...nacho cheese dog. I cannot eat a dry hot dog so there was no way I was going to eat a dry vegetarian sausage. I chopped up some onion and caramelized them and added it to my sausage with some yellow mustard. I cooked the sausages in the same skillet and little bit of oil that I caramelized the onions in making for super easy cleanup. We were both surprised at how tasty the sausages were and we definitely want to try other LightLife products.

LightLife Italian style sausage with caramelized onions and french fries

08.07.11_Eastern Market Pasta

Eastern Market ravioli

My friend Diana's sister, Rebecca, was visiting this weekend and they invited me and Phillip to come to Eastern Market with them on Saturday before my sailing trip. I had not been since I was a kid so Phillip and I got ourselves out of bed and headed over to meet them. We walked around, saw some cool artwork, and enjoyed free samples of local produce. I really wanted to buy something but we had not planned out our meals for the week so I did not want to buy produce and have it go to waste. Diana told me that inside they sold handmade pastas that were really good so we decided to check it out. We had a tough time deciding on just one or two pastas so we decided to buy four different kinds. The woman behind the counter told us the pasta would be fine in the fridge for up to a week so we decided two pasta nights in one week was acceptable. We ended up with three types of ravioli (smoked mozzarella for Phillip, goat cheese and basil for me, and spinach and cheese for both of us) and some tortellini.


After cleaning the apartment and doing laundry all day I was not really in the mood to make some elaborate meal. We decided to cook half the pasta for a quick easy meal. Because, as you know, I can't have just one thing to eat I decided to take the leftover buns from our Sloppy Joe night and make some garlic bread. Stealing another Rachael Ray trick, I used my microplane to grate garlic into melted butter, spread it on the bread and then just toasted it in the toaster oven. I also made myself my typical side salad with the raspberry vinaigrette. A quick, delicious, and filling meal where we did not feel like were leaving something out by not having meat.

Goat cheese and basil ravioli for me and smoked mozzarella ravioli for Phillip!

08.06.11_Dad's Birthday

Last Monday was my Dad's birthday. To celebrate we bought tickets to go sailing up in Annapolis for a sunset sail. My colleagues and I had gone a few weeks back and it was amazing. We had perfect weather, saw the sunset over the bay, and then went out to dinner afterward. Sadly the weather was anything but perfect for our trip on Saturday. We ended up having a memorable trip to say the least, full of crashing waves, rain, and the boat feeling like it was going to capsize and throw all of the passengers overboard.

Me and my mom, scared out of our minds...before the boat had even left the dock!

Prior to getting on the boat we went out to dinner. We were going to go to a restaurant right at the dock but when we got there they told us there power had gone out and they were no longer seating tables. We decided to wander down to the main drag of Annapolis and found Middleton Tavern. It was right by the water and had outdoor seating so we went in. This was my first time eating out this month since Phillip and I have been cooking every night and making sure that we cook enough to have leftovers for lunch the next day at work. I've always been somewhat aware of the lack of vegetarian options at restaurants (especially now that Caitlin has gone vegan) but it is completely different when it affects you directly. The restaurant had a total of one vegetarian entree. Luckily it sounded good to me, Tagliarini in a lemon butter sauce. We also ordered a vegetarian appetizer of macadamia nut-encrusted goat cheese with a mango salsa and soy glaze. So good. Sadly, the pasta underwhelmed and came out overcooked. Needless to say, watching my family eat their rockfish and steak was harder than expected. The rest of my family loved their food so if you are ever in Annapolis and not a vegetarian I would still recommend Middleton Tavern.

Me and my sister, Rachel, attempting to stay dry. Fail.

08.05.11_Veggie Sloppy Joes

Sad picture of the Sloppy "Veg-Head Joes" and sweet potato fries. I had a better picture but my camera decided to focus on only the bun...

On Friday my best friend Caitlin was coming into the city to have dinner and go out with us that night. After a year-long trip to Thailand, Caitlin became a vegan (much to my dismay). All of our favorite foods together could no longer be shared so I selfishly hoped that she would see the light and go back to her meat eating ways. Unfortunately for me this did not happen, so when we had her over for dinner on Friday the meal had to be vegan. I had found another Rachael Ray recipe that intrigued me for "Sloppy Veg-Head Joes." I thought this would be a good instance to try them as the only modification I'd have to make to make it completely vegetarian and vegan-friendly would be to substitute vinegar for the Worcestershire sauce since it apparently contains anchovies.

Phillip and I went to Whole Foods earlier in the week to buy all the ingredients. While standing in line to check out I had a mini-panic attack when I realized I chose a dish that two of the primary ingredients were tomatoes and onions, both things that Phillip does not eat. We decided he would deal with it, try them and if he didn't like it, we could find him something else to eat that night. Worst comes to worst he can have a delicious meal of sweet potato fries since I had planned on serving them as a side to the Joes. I did end up leaving out the onions from half of the Joes to appease Phillip a little bit since he was trying a tomato based meal.
Per usual, Ray Ray did not disappoint. The recipe was incredible easy, a "one pot meal," and did taste like Sloppy Joes to a certain extent. We followed the advice of one of the reviewers and mashed the black beans with a potato masher to make all the ingredients bind together, making the Joes a little less sloppy to eat. Phillip did a good job and ate his, but the fact that he only wanted one shows he wasn't a huge fan of this meal. Overall, they were pretty tasty and if you have a strong love for Sloppy Joes (which none of us do) but have decided to vegetarian, give this recipe a try.

08.04.11_Sesame Noodles with Tofu

Confession: I learned almost everything I know about cooking from the Food Network. I had it on basically 24/7 in college unless I was in class or watching another one of my shows that I regularly watch. Rachael Ray specifically taught me a lot of great tips and easy techniques that I use all the time. Sadly the days of Ray Ray teaching me new things seems to be over, as I am now more than fully aware that nutmeg is that little something in the background that makes you go "Hmmm what is that?" and that a Stoup is thinner than a stew but thicker than a soup. Get it? Stoup? That being said, since I have been having to look up actual recipes this month I thought Rachael Ray would be a good person to look to for fast and easy meals since that is what she is known for after all.

 After searing for "vegetarian" on foodnetwork.com and narrowing my search results down to show only Rachael Ray recipes I found her recipe for Sesame Noodles. As the recipe shows, they were extremely straight forward and super simple. The recipe was actually meant to be for a side dish so I just tripled the recipe so I could use a whole box of pasta and to make enough for an entree.

To add some protein into the mix we decided to try and cook tofu, something I had never cooked with before. Deciding on which tofu to buy was quite the scene. Phillip and I went to Whole Foods and were not at all prepared for the plethora of options that were presented to us. We ended up buying extra firm tofu based on my rationale that "if I'm going to be sauteing this, I want it to be firm so that it doesn't fall apart." Extra firm also had the fewest number of boxes left on the shelf so we figured if everyone else was buying it, we should too.

After watching a video online no how to prepare tofu, I was ready to go. It was easy enough, same as cooking chicken or any other protein. I added the sauteed tofu in with the sesame noodles and served the with a side of steamed edamame.

A few things I would do different next time:
1) The noodles themselves did not come out as flavorful as I had hoped. I found this to be odd especially after comparing the colors of my sesame noodles to the picture on Food Network's website. My noodles came out a much darker brown so I assumed I had more sauce and therefore more flavor. When we heated up the leftovers I added some more soy sauce and a little more sesame oil and found them to be more enjoyable.

2) I would put the tofu directly into the sauce before mixing the sauce into the noodles. Since tofu is like a sponge it absorbs any flavors that you put it with. Because I had dressed the noddles with the sauce prior to adding the tofu, there was not much left for the tofu to absorb. By putting the tofu into the sauce first, it would have much more flavor and taste less like plan sauteed tofu.

08.03.11_Bean Tacos and Sangria

This summer my friends Steph and Kim have internships in DC. At the beginning of the summer we decided to make a fun summer cocktail and hang out at my apartment. We started doing this every week and it turned into a fun weekly ritual where we drank, either cooked or ordered in, and acted like geriatrics while watching Wheel of Fortune (Phillip is unstoppable), Jeopardy, and So You Think You Can Dance (SYTYCD). "Wild Wednesday" as we coined it, like our month of vegetarianism, gave us an excuse to try to new things, just in this case, the new things were drinks.

Lucky for us, Steph is a vegetarian and Kim is usually pretty apathetic when it comes to making a decision about what food and drink we should have for the week. This week I really wanted to make sangria. We had discussed it several times in the past put always found some quicker, simpler cocktail to do instead. I found an easy recipe online and it was surprisingly good.

Delicious sangria!

The only times I've had sangria were at tapas restaurants and while I was in Spain so I wanted to eat something along those lines. We decided to go with bean tacos, which I realize are not Spanish but at least have similar flavors. Like Tuesday's pizza, I wanted something easy required a minimal amount of cooking since the main point of Wild Wednesday is to drink and be social, not cooking while your friends are having all the fun. The only "cooking" I did was making the sangria and boiling water for the box of Spanish rice I bought. The rest was just opening cans of beans, warming up tortillas, and dicing some tomatoes and lettuce for toppings.

In somewhat related good news, I was very pleased with the results for SYTYCD! Bye bye Caitlynn and Ricky! Only one more week of putting up with Mary Murphy's screaming and then its over...thank God.

08.02.11_Pizza

On Monday while I was at work I found myself on Ticketmasters' website. I realized that Taylor Swift was going to be in DC the next for her sold out show that Phillip and I had not managed to get tickets to. I went on Craigslist and lucked into half-priced tickets for Tuesday. It's Day 2 of our vegetarian adventure, and I have one hour to make dinner, eat, and get out to the door! I decided today was not the day to be experimenting with some new recipe and chose to fall back to one of my easy defaults: pizza.

When I was in college at U.Va the grocery store I always went to was Kroger. I randomly discovered that they carried one of those pizza dough packages for less than $1. All you have to do is add water and you have "homemade" pizza dough. I fell in love with them because they were so quick, extremely easy, and you could do so many different things with them. One of my favorites to make was a BBQ chicken pizza (obviously not an option this month). Since graduating and moving to DC, I have not found a single grocery store who carries a product remotely close to this, and trust me, I checked ALL the stores in the area. Every time I'm anywhere near a Kroger, I go in and stock up on a ton of dough packages to take home with me. They always come in handy for nights like this.
So like I said, the pizza dough is incredibly easy because all you have to do is add 1/2 cup of warm water and let it sit before stretching it out on a pizza pan, put on the sauce and toppings, then sticking it in a 450 degree oven for 10 minutes or so. Because it is a packaged mix, I always doctor up the crust by adding in Parmesan cheese, fresh cracked black pepper, a little olive oil, and depending on the pizza some type of herb. In this case I was just making a half cheese (for Phillip) half tomato and feta (for me) so I put in some oregano. Since Phillip doesn't eat feta or tomatoes (unless they are in something) I had leftovers of the cucumber, tomato and feta salad I made the night before. I picked out the little bit of cucumber that was left and reused the salad for the toppings on my half of the pizza, saving time and food from going to waste.

The pizza before it went into the oven.

I'm super weird about food and don't like every bite of my meal to taste the same (Meanwhile, Phillip adores the efficiency of mixing everything together, as seen in his love for the Bob Evans Biscuit Bowls). I always liked to have a protein, a vegetable, and a starch so I could break up the monotony of the meal. This has been more difficult being vegetarian but I made myself a super simple salad on the side to add a little variation into the meal. My favorite quick salad is just lettuce (I prefer a spring mix) with goat cheese and raspberry walnut vinaigrette dressing. Basically anything with goat cheese I am obsessed with.

As always, the pizza was quick and delicious, and we made it in time to see the concert with no problem! Hopefully I won't fall back to making pizza's too often as the initial excitement of the task at hand wears off.

08.01.11_Falafel

Let me start out by saying one of the main things that made me agree to going vegetarian was the idea of having to try new recipes and actually plan out my meals in advance. I have become extremely comfortable (or should I say complacent?) opening the refrigerator and whipping something together with whatever I may have at the time. That seems a lot more daunting as a vegetarian, considering dropping meat all together was intimidating enough.

With that being said, our first night of our vegetarian adventure I dived right in with falafel. I thought falafel would be good for multiple reasons: 1) It's something that I have always wanted to make and never got around to doing. 2) I could use some help from the grocery and buy the mix. Yes, I know, it's a cop out but I was making plenty of other things from scratch in my tiny kitchen and did not want to get overwhelmed on Day 1! 3) What better way to not miss meat than by frying something? And most importantly 4) I know Phillip likes it.
As you may have guessed, using the mix was super simple. Just put the mix together, let sit for the time stated on the side of the box, and voilà, you've got falafel mix! I originally tried to make the falafel balls by using a ice cream scooper and a spoon to drop the balls into the frying oil. I quickly realized that if I wanted spherical falafel instead of nondescript blobs I would have to use my hands. After a few tries I got into a rhythm and was impressed by how easy it actually was.

Prior to getting my hands messy in the falafel mix, I had prepped all of the side items (greek-style potato wedges, cucumber, tomato and feta salad, homemade "tzatziki" sauce) and accoutrement (sliced cucumber, lettuce, hummus, pita bread). For the wedges, salad and sauce I looked up basic recipes online to give me a starting point and then added and subtracted ingredients to make it my own. The potato wedges were super simple, tossed in a mixture of olive oil, fresh lemon juice, oregeno, a dash of cayenne, and S&P, roasted in a 425 degree oven. The tzatziki was just greek-style yogurt mixed with 3/4 of a grated English cucumber, garlic, the juice and zest of one lemon, cumin, and S&P. For the salad I just diced a tomato, the rest of the cucumber, and tossed them with feta cheese, oregano and S&P.

The meal turned out great and made for awesome leftovers the next day! I definitely will be making falafel again in the future, and may even venture into homemade falafel and humus if I have more time on the weekend.

07.31.11_Herbivores?

It's 9:30pm on Sunday, July 31st. My boyfriend, Phillip, and I are at the the Verizon Center for the Femme Fatale Tour. Nicki Minaj has just finished her set and we are both anxiously awaiting Britney Spears to take the stage. Phillip turns me to me and says, "I've been thinking about this a lot. For the month of August I want to be vegetarian." Not exactly what I expected to hear while buzzed at a Britney concert, especially coming from Phillip.

In case you didn't know, Phillip grew up in the Village of New Lebanon in Ohio, which has a population of approximately 2,500 according to the 2000 Census. On the couple of trips we have made to his hometown I have left feeling, full, to say the least. Raised on biscuits and gravy and never being forced to eat his vegetables, Phillip had to explore new foods on his own during college and after graduation. Additionally, he has a laundry list of foods he does not like and will not eat, several of which are vegetables.
Perhaps now you can see why the news that he wanted to go vegetarian for a month was even more surprising than originally described. I had often considered going vegetarian and always ended up talking myself out of it for one reason or another.  This presented itself as the perfect opportunity for me to finally follow through. So it was decided. For the month of August, Phillip and I would try our best to remove all meat from our diets.

With this blog I hope to chronicle our dinners for the duration of the month of August.

Me and Phillip at the concert. My large smile indicates that he had not told me his desire to go vegetarian yet.