Meat for a vegetarian

As a vegetarian, there are times I want to be able to have a quick meal of burgers or hot dogs and fries. No, I do not want meat, but there are times it is nice to be able to just make a quick meal or healthier comfort food. Sure black beans and rice or lentils and rice can be comfort foods and I do like them a lot, but they are not as quick, at times as I would like. And it is nice to be able to use meat substitutes in recipes, so I tend to use veggie burgers or tofu pups or fake meat. Most of these fake meat things are just not very good, sometimes they taste weird and/or have a weird texture and sometimes they are just plain disgusting. I do eat fish, but the salmon burgers I have tasted are as bad as the veggie burgers. I do eat veggie burgers at times and they are OK, I have found I like Morningstar Farms stuff the best, but really these are only really sad imitations. When i am really lucky I am able to find restaurants who make their own veggie burgers like this place or this place. But really places that make their own veggie burgers and do not just use the same frozen patties you find in the grocery store are few and far between. But then something happens, you find a veggie meat product at the grocery store that is truly good. Well, I found one that I really like. The Trader Joe's Italian Sausage, GG and I had tried a little sample at the store a few weeks ago and thought it was pretty good, so we decided to get some and use them in a recipe. We made some of the sausage in some pasta sauce and put it over pasta. It was good, really good in fact, but the sauce was really good so maybe that was the reason they tasted so good. So, GG got the sausages again to try in Italian sausage sandwiches with some onions and peppers maybe. Well, we finally decided to have the Italian sausage, but no onions or peppers so just sausage on bread with some ketchup and mustard. MMMMMMMM...well the sausage was still really good. I was so happy and now will have to think about keeping this Italian sausage from Trader Joe's in the house for when we want a sandwich or to put in soups or in pasta etc. It seems so simple to just find a way to put good flavoring in the sausage, the herbs in Italian sausage is not exactly a secret and yet no one else has figured out how to do it, except whatever brand TJ's throws their label on.

So for those of you who are vegetarian or semi-vegetarian or who just want a lower fat alternative to regular Italian sausage try the Trader Joe's brand as a good alternative.

Being a vegetarian is hard

I have kind of been thinking about this post for a while, but then tonight at a gathering that GG and I went to it kind of came to a head. Last week GG and I were out and about and we stopped at a Trader Joe's mainly so I could go to the bathroom, but we figured we would pick up some cheese while we were there. I picked up some Cowchego (Manchego made from cow's milk) and I picked up another type of cheese, but in looking at the ingredients I noticed that it had annimal rennet in it so I put it back down again. GG asked my why I had put it away and I said because of the rennet, and I said that if I was going to be a vegetarian I might as well "do it right." Now the rennet is not that big of a deal, but really if I am picking out cheese and I think about it I might prefer the non-animal rennet to the animal rennet just because the idea of animal rennet is mildly repulsive to me, but I am not going to look at every package of cheese to see what the rennet source is and I am not going to stop eating cheese because of the animal rennet and I am not going to not get cheese in a restaurant because I don't know the source of the rennet for the cheese. This is more of a, I am going to try, but not a big deal versus that whole not eating pork, beef or poultry at all thing I am doing. So tonight we were at a gathering and one of the women was discussing how she was a vegetarian and ate dairy, but had issues with eggs. She had stopped eating them for a while and then her husband had started making eggs in the morning for breakfast and she was fine with that, but then she had to separate an egg recently and that threw her off of eggs again. GG was mentioning how it can be hard to be a vegetarian and there need to be limits at times on how strict you can be unless you want to be a vegan, I guess. She mentioned the whole animal rennet versus vegetable rennet in cheese thing as this women is eating a veggie cheese burger and she just kind of was like, huh, what? I also have a coworker who is a vegetarian and thinks she is being really good if she gets a cheese sandwich at McDonalds as there is no meat, but then she get french fries, which at McDonalds are soaked in beef tallow to add flavoring.

I know many people have a variety of reasons for choosing to be a vegetarian, for me it is just about factory farming and corporate slaughter houses and for some it is about health and for some it is about not wanting to kill another animal. The woman tonight seemed to be a vegetarian because she had issues with the killing of animals, which is all well and good, but then maybe she should not be eating cheese either, at least not out. It does amaze me at times how many things you would think are just naturally vegetarian and aren't. It also surprises me when people that I would think would think about and maybe research their decision to become a vegetarian, but don't. It is so trendy now to be a vegetarian and yet it is almost easier in some ways to be a vegan. You know you will not eat, eggs, honey or dairy in any form. This seems to get rid of the whole cheese issue, but not really the McDonald's issue, but that was big news for a while and if you are not aware of the whole beef in the french fries thing, it is not my place to tell you. We all have out reasons for being a vegetarian, but does the trendiness of the decision overcome people's being informed about their decisions?