Vegetarians and the Single Man

[Voadam]

Okay, a low carb diet is difficult but not impossible. If this decision is born from health issues dealing with genetic and chemical alterations done to livestock, then I would suggest looking into free range, organic meats.

That way she can keep her diet varied, but still be worry free about most health issues.

Organic maybe, but free range does not have health implications or even guarantee that they are kept in humane conditions. Good recent article on this in the straight dope city-paper column.

 

[Sialia]

Thick, Hearty Doesn’t-taste-like-squash Roasted Butternut Squash Soup with Buttered S

(You need fresh sage to do this---it won’t work with dry. But it’s worth it.)



Thick, Hearty Doesn’t-taste-like-squash Roasted Butternut Squash Soup with Buttered Sage



Peel a butternut squash and cut into large chunks. Place in a microwavable dish with a few tablespoons of water and a lid.



Microwave until soft, about 5 minutes.



Puree in blender or food processor.



Add salt, pepper, 1 Tbs butter, 1 Tbs granualted onion or onion powder (or some sauteed onions or shallots), 3 tablespoons grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese, a little bit of ground nutmeg



Puree again. Check consistency--if too thick, add vegetable broth (canned is fine) to thin it to proper soup consistency.



Pour back into microwave dish and reheat until good eating temperature.

Meanwhile, in a large sauté pan, melt the remaining 3 tablespoons of butter. Add about 12 fresh sage leaves to the butter and cook until the butter starts to brown and the leaves get black and crispy. No really. Remove from the heat.

Place some soup in each serving bowl. Drizzle or swirl the butter sauce over the soup. Sprinkle more parmesan cheese over each bowl. A squeeze of Siracha hot sauce (look in the Asian foods section of the grocery store, there’s a rooster on the bottle, and it’s red) is good in it, too, and gives nice color. If you don’t like the hot stuff, try roasting peeling and pureeing a few red bell peppers into it. Use enough bell peppers and you can leave out the squash (although I’d leave out the nutmeg and add a little milk and some more broth and lots more parmesan).

Nice with crusty bread and a salad. Love those sourdough bread bowls . .. .

 

[Skade]

This has all been very, very helpful. Especially the links to the various recipe books and the dishes you all prefer. I'm going to try several of these myself, even outisde of her presence to get a better feel for the whole thing. Some of the tomato based ones sound very, very nice.

 

[Uzumaki]

I started a thread a bit like this a few months ago. Some great advice, huge kudos to the person who told me to get some tempeh.

http://enworld.cyberstreet.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=55076

 

[Agback]

The decision was born out of her hypersensitivty to health, so I should mention that she avoids carbs on a regular basis, prefers high protein and low fat. She is not easy to please.

Well, if she thinks that vegetarian diets are healthier than others I am afraid that she is misinformed, but we're never going to settle that.

Low-carb vegetarian diets are very tricky, since most vegetable sources of protein (eg. beans, peas, hard wheat) contain quite a lot of carbohydrate. Your girlfriend had better decide that fish, eggs, and cheese are vegetables, or she's going to find it hard to get adequate protein.

Regards,


Agback

 

[woodelf]

But Sialia brings up a good point: the existence of pre-packaged frozen faux meat. Opinions will differ greatly on this stuff, but I think some of it is pretty good.

Yeah, several of my carnivore friends have admitted that some of the veggieburgers and veggiedogs are better than anything they've ever had with meat in it. As for [pseudo-]vegetarian opinions on faux meat: well, i'm an omnivore, and i think most of the faux meat is disgusting--it tastes just like real meat! Personally, i say find the ones with lots of nuts, and maybe some cheese--they're generally the best. Fulfill the dietary role of meat, but without that annoying taste (i'm ok with chicken, especially as a minor ingredient in a dish, but just don't care for the taste of most animal flesh). IMHO, the harder they try to taste like meat, the worse they taste.

 

[woodelf]

I've been a vegetarian for 19 years - the food is easy.

With a lot of italian pastas you can just swap the meat for tofu. Works great for spagetti and lasangna for example. With spagetti it's especially nice if you also add walnuts - though the tofu turns purple.

Look to asian dishes. Chinese Indian and Thai in particular. Tofu curries are great - a bunch of mixed veggies, tofu, and a spicy curry over asian rice (the sticky stuff). Use a cocunut curry and the dish takes on a thai feeling. Good veggies for this are the same sorts one might put in a stew: carrots, potatoes, onions, brocoli, bell peppers, etc... (you can just look at the list of items in some of the veggie mixes in the frozen section of the grocery store, then go over to produce and get fresh versions of them).

Mexican food also works great - and again often you can just slide in tofu where meat used to sit with little change to anything else. But remember to buy the vegetarian beans in the store, not the ones with lard in the mix...

Also, don't worry too much about staying "true" to ethnic tastes. Frex, when i make fajitas i put in pretty much whatever veggies are in season, as well as onions and peppers. People always do a double take when they see asparagus, brocolli, spinach, tomato, zuchini, and/or carrots, but they always comment at how tasty they are afterwards. Likewise, you can cook "chinese" using whatever veggies are easily available, if you don't have a handy asian-food store.

As for tofu: find an asian food store, (unless you're lucky with your local grocery) and check out "yellow" and "triangle" tofu. These are both *much* firmer than most other varieties/firmnesses of tofu, and the firmer of the two (i forget, but i think yellow) is about the texture/consistency of chicken, making it a perfect substitute.

 

[woodelf]

why bring it up and then ask people not to discuss it?

perhaps it is just my pet peeve, but bringin something up and asking others not to discuss it seems wrong.

i like merak, and have no problem with him personally, but i see more and more people doing this here.

"i think x, please do not comment" is it just me or does someone else share this pet peeve?

He didn't put forth a reason and say "don't disagree with me", he put forth a topic and said "not much point in discussing this". I understand what he means, and i'd agree with you on the pet peeve about bringing up something only to ask others not to respond. But he wasn't doing that--he didn't put forth an argument, just a topic--and specifically acknowledged that there are two (or more) sides to the topic.

 

[Tom Cashel]

Don't be a pussy.

Cook two filet mignons, RARE.

If she wants to know what she can eat, gesture toward the mashed potatoes and grunt.

 

[LightPhoenix]

At barbecues, I ask that my veggie burger or kabob not be touching the meat stuff (or, like, right next to it where the juicy meat spatter will get onto it), but I understand that not everyone cleans their grill between each use -- I compromise by assuming that any meat products that were left on the grill beforehand have likely been charred away to nothing, so putting a veggie burger on a spot that had meat on it awhile ago is alright.

Random comment/PSA - clean your grill often!!!

When you leave gunk on the grill, the repeated exposure of said gunk to high temperatures causes a chemical reaction that makes some pretty nasty stuff - polycyclic aromatic compounds (kind of like benzene) and heterocyclic aromatic amines (still kind of like benzene, but less so). These have been proven to be carcinogenic in animals, and while some people will say there's no conclusive proof about humans, I hasten to remind everyone we are animals too. The most common place to find these is on grills, and while it may seem like everything has been burned off, that isn't necessarily the case.

They're really cool compounds though, especially the PACs. Just not safe to ingest. Or touch really. But anything that bad has to be cool.

On topic, I'm very suspicious of all these specialty diets, the Atkins diet especially since it's the new fad. And while studies on the Atkins diets are as of yet inconclusive (not enough have really been done for or against, and none particularly scientifically, IMO), there haven't been any that I know of that address the long-term effects of carbohydrate deprivation and the stresses it causes on the body. There are lots of key biological functions that depend on our ingesting of carbohydrates.

I'd definitely recommending having a talk with your gf and finding out exactly why she wants to become a vegetarian. If it is because of self-esteem reasons (which based solely on what has been said seems to be the case), I think it would be a good idea to try and get her to see a professional nutritionist at the very least, and possibly even seek counseling. I don't mean to be overly alarmist, but this seems like it could very easily evolve into an eating disorder of some kind. At the very least a nutritionist will be able to discuss the pros and cons of becoming vegetarian a lot better than most of us here. It's a great step to take if you're doing it for the right reasons, but I'm not convinced this is the case here.