Before we gave meat the boot for good, I have to admit that we ate a lot of hamburger. In fact, I’m a wee bit embarrassed about it, quite frankly, considering that hamburger isn’t exactly considered health food, even by those folks who do eat meat. (Not to mention the fact that coming down with a nasty case of E. Coli is a heck of a lot more possible with hamburger than it is with other types of meat. Hardly a day goes by now without word of yet another recall somewhere in North America. Heck, you almost need to treat it like toxic waste while you’re cooking with it, or else you risk making someone sick. ) I wouldn’t be surprised to see instructions on cooking hamburger in the future to include elbow-high rubber gloves and safety goggles.

However, you do have to admit that hamburger is convenient, relatively cheap, and very versatile, which made it an attractive option for this busy Mom at the end of the workday. So when we gave it up, hamburger was one of the first things I focused on replacing.

Luckily, meat substiutes are big business these days, so finding something we all liked just as well was easy. Enter Stage Left, Soy Ground Round!

There are two brands that I know of that are available here in Bridgewater; one is made by Yves, and is available in both Sobeys and the Superstore. My favourite is the ground round made by President’s Choice Blue Menu, available in the deli section at the Superstore.

It retails for $3.99 but goes on sale fairly frequently for $2.99, so I stock up at those times and chuck them in the fridge.

We use the soy ground round in most dishes that call for hamburger, like Hamburger Helper….

Spaghetti and “meat” sauce……

…and sloppy joes.

In fact, soy ground round is so much like the real thing that I’ve served dishes made with it to die-hard meat lovers (who would rather die than give up their grip on their steak) and they didn’t even know it wasn’t hamburger. Even those who can tell it isn’t real still find it perfectly tasty.

Only one caveat: It seems to be tastier in dishes with a tomato base, like pasta sauce, than with a gravy base. (Although I haveused it to make that Lunenburg county oddity of hamburger and gravy over fries! )

So in honour of this fabulous product, here is a very simple chili recipe made with it. This would be a great way to introduce skeptical meat eaters to the Joy of Soy. Oi!

Can o’ This, Can o’ That Chili

Begin with a large pot.

Add:

2 Tsp oil

1 medium onion, chopped

¼ cup diced red bell pepper

~Sauté until onions start to brown. Then add:

1- 284 ml can of condensed tomato soup (I use Heinz) plus one can of water

1 -796 ml can of diced tomatoes, pureed in the can with an immersion blender. (Or simply dump into a bowl and mash if you like your tomatoes chunky) plus one can of water.

1-284 ml can of mushroom pieces and stems, drained

1-398 ml can of red kidney beans. Take about a quarter of the beans and mash them with a fork before adding to the chilli.)

½ tsp salt

¼ tsp black pepper

2 tsp paprika

1 ½ to 2 tsp chilli powder

¾ tsp onion powder

¾ tsp garlic salt

Then and only then, add:

1 package soy “ground round”, crumbled.

Simmer until chilli is thick and vegetables are tender, about 30-40 minutes.

Tonight’s supper wasn’t up to me, for a change; Bob actually had a specific request: tofu “chicken wings”. You know, tofu has gotten a really bad rap in popular culture today. Just mentioning the word seems to be synonymous with weak, effeminate, Birkenstock-clad freakdom.

However, tofu, once you know how to cook it, is pretty darn tasty, not to mention really versatile. I wasn’t always adept at cooking tofu. Back in the early nineties, when I first started dabbling in the “meatless life”, I had absolutely no sweet clue what to do with that big white block. The resources for up-and-coming tofu chefs simply didn’t exist back then that we have now. (Today, all you have to do is Google “Tofu Recipes”, and you get precisely 226,000 hits.) Back then, I had to rely on seventies-era hippie cookbooks from the library, or use my own (quote unquote) “expertise.” I remember the first time I tried to cook tofu. I simmered it all afternoon in the oven, using my Grand mammy’s secret sweet and sour sauce. Heck, that sauce would have made an old shoe taste good. Unfortunately for me, it also made the tofu (which has, let’s face it, some absorptive tendencies) bloat up like an old used kitchen sponge. My dear hubby, God bless him, choked it down without a word. (I threw mine in the composter.) 

Cut the block in half, and gently but firmly squeeze the excess water out. I use two saucers-I just press the blocks firmly between the saucer, one at a time, and let the water run out over the sink. .
Cut each square half-block into two triangles, and then cut each triangle into four triangular pieces. You should now have 16 triangles.

So, the first thing people ask when they find out that we don’t eat meat is, what possessed you to go veg?  Well, I’ll tell you. Just over two years ago, my daughter and I were watching for the umpteenth time her favourite movie- “Supersize Me”, by Morgan Spurlock. In case some of you are not familiar with the movie, it is a documentary in which the filmmaker eats nothing but McDonald’s for 30 days straight, damaging his health to an amazing degree in the process.

At the end of the thirty days, Morgan is nursed back to perfect health by his girlfriend, who happens to be a vegan chef. My daughter and I got to talking about it one day, and then after the talking we got to wondering: What would happen if the experiment was conducted in reverse? What if you took a couple of people whose diets left a lot to be desired, (us, but especially me) and put them on a vegan diet for 30 days? (No animal products of any kind, including eggs and dairy.) Would our cholesterol go down? Would our weight go down? What other improvements, if any, would we notice?

At the time we were a pretty typical family. We liked pizza and burgers and KFC, and although we didn’t eat out a lot, when we did it was fast food. Soda was a feature at almost ever meal, and the cookie jar and chip cupboard were never empty. We were also carrying more weight around the middle than we would like, felt tired all the time, and generally felt like lifeless sacks of wet cement.

Since my daughter had a science fair coming up in the spring, I proposed that we do the whole experiment as her entry in the fair. She agreed that this was a fine idea, and we were off!

And we started off on the right foot. We went to the doctor for a thorough check-up and blood work, with the intention of repeating the visit 30 days later. The doctor gave her blessing on our little plan, quizzed me to make sure I understood good nutrition, and sent us on our way.

And so it began. Originally intended as an experiment for just her and I, my husband surprised me on day one by proclaiming that he wanted in on the experiment too. I was surprised, (in fact I thought he must have been buttering me up for something) but pleased. My son, who was ten at the time, wasn’t on the plan right away, but simply by living in a household of “temporary vegans” he was eating mainly veg food also.

And a funny thing happened. My daughter and I, who both had asthma, noticed an immediate improvement of our symptoms. (IN fact, within two months we were rid of our inhalers entirely.)  My husband, who comes from a long line of folks with chronic sinus congestion, had his problems decrease by about two-thirds. (He also lost ten pounds.)  My (ahem) chronic constipation disappeared like magic.

And we didn’t find it difficult. In fact, making the transition was ridiculously easy, especially when we saw the dramatic difference it made in our health.

Three weeks into the experiment, my daughter was crestfallen to discover that the science fair was cancelled. But you know what? By then we didn’t care. We all felt so great that we boxed up and gave away about $500 worth of meat from our freezer, including most of a side of beef we bought in the previous fall. (If that doesn’t tell you what a change we felt in our lives, nothing will!)

But what sealed the deal was two different documentaries that we had the opportunity to view a month or two later. One was called “The Witness”, and it was one that my husband found particularly moving, probably because it looks at the issue of animal rights from a man’s perspective. The other, called “Earthlings”, narrated by Joaquin Phoenix of Walk the Line fame, is a very powerful look at the relationship between human beings and animals, and an unflinching look at how our treatment of animals is changing our world, and not for the better.

Seeing in such a vivid way that the food choices we were making every day positively affected the life of animals (and the environment) was enough to seal the deal. If we thought we were committed to our new diet for health reasons alone, now we were twice as sure that this was the way we wanted to eat for the rest of our lives. (My son included. He’s the most committed convert of us all!)

As it turns out, my daughter and I never did return to have a follow-up appointment, because we were so healthy that neither of us has needed to see the doctor since. My husband, however, did find out that cholesterol dropped from 225 to 166 in the span of six months, and he has also rid himself of a Chrohn’s-like bowel problem that had plagued him for almost ten years. (Unfortunately though, mainly because I sure do love to eat, going meatless hasn’t exactly been a path to weight loss……I still have the same ample behind that I had before…:0))

One side effect of our new diet is that we suddenly were open to a whole new world of food experiences. Formerly accustomed to fairly standard meat-and-potatoes meals, we now had a field day trying out all kinds of new cuisines- Mexican, Indian, Italian, etc, and chowing down on exotic new fruits and vegetables. Our diet has a level of variety in it that is ten times more diverse than it ever was. Every day is an adventure.

Coming up soon: Some products available here in town that we found made valuable additions to our new way of eating.

WOW! It’s been crazy two years since our family, in one fell swoop, became strict vegetarians overnight, and I’d love to take y’all along for the ride. 

But first, an introduction!  We’re a pretty typical family of four, I think. A Mom and Dad who slog off to work everyday, lunch buckets in hand and wishing it was Friday. Two kids in junior high, dealing with the inevitable peer pressure, homework, and occasional inconvenient zit. One cat, two cars, two sets of in-laws who think we’ve lost our minds, and one old farmhouse in the country that we’ll be working on until retirement. (And maybe beyond!) .  We are really just your typical small-town, unpretentious folks who like to garden, probably watch too much reality  TV, and have a not-so-secret fondness for potato chips.

The only difference between our clan and most of the other families we run into every day is that we eat almost no animal products, with the exception of perhaps a wee bit of cheese on our pizza when we eat out or travel, and the odd smattering of egg or dairy in some of the veggie burgers and meat substitutes we buy. (Our goal is to eat absolutely no meat, and to ingest less than two percent of the amount of eggs and dairy that most people eat.)  It’s been two years since we chowed down on a cheeseburger, two years since we cooked up a turkey.

And what an interesting ride it has been! At different times, being a vegetarian in a small town has been difficult, enlightening, irritating and rewarding. One thing it has always been is deeply satisfying in way few other things in our lives has been. Our health has improved a great deal in the last two years, and we’re also happy to be treading more softly on the planet, environmentally speaking.

So, over the next little while I hope to give y’all a little glimpse into the everyday trials and tribulations of life in the veg lane. There’ll be a few simple recipes, (for any folks pondering going meatless, even part-time), some recommendations for great veg-friendly products available locally, and maybe even a laugh or three. (Because if there’s one thing a vegetarian needs to have in a meat-eating world, it’s the ability to laugh at yourself and not take life too seriously.)

I’m also currently studying towards my diploma in Holistic Nutrition, and I’m learning tons of fascinating things about the ability of our diet to either sicken or heal, depending on what we choose to stuff down our gobs.  You can bet that I’ll be sharing some of the interesting tidbits I’m learning along the way!

So, stop by often and catch up on what’s new with Lunenburg County’s craziest family of veg-heads!

Peace,

Tracy