Road to Vegetarianism

Well mostly homemade, except for the crust.  Here's the recipe & cost: 1 pizza thick crust - 1.99$ 1/2 tomato - 0.50$ 1/4 lb mushrooms - 0.75$ 1/4 green bell pepper - 0.16$ 1/2 onion - 0.10$ 200g shredded cheese - 2.00$ 1/2 can of pasta sauce - 0.50$ dash of barbecue sauce - 0.00$ (it's really minimal) Total cost for dinner: 6.00$ Thinly slice mushrooms, peppers, tomatoes and onion.  Cook onion in a pan until caramelized.  Cover the crust with pasta sauce, layer tomatoes,  mushrooms, peppers and onion.  Drizzle some barbecue sauce over the pizza.  Top with cheese.  Cook in the oven at 425C until cheese is melted and crust is toasted. Note: I think I would put less pasta sauce next time, as it was very acidic.  Maybe actual pizza sauce would of been better, but I didn't have any on hand and pasta sauce are cheaper.  I would probably add 1 whole caramelized onion next time as the sweetness from the onion was quite delicious.

I think that's a question some people may ask.  I ask it myself.  In the movie Food Inc., the Mexican family said they couldn't afford to buy fresh vegetables and make meals because it costs more than the dollar burgers they feed their kids.  In Canada, the burgers at the fast food joints aren't as cheap as in the States, so I think cooking your own healthy meal may end up being cheaper.  Another point, I like to make is that, if people make their meals based on what vegetables, groceries are on sale that week, it is definitely more economical.  My best argument would be the show "Extreme Couponing" on TLC.  It is impossible to have groceries for free in Canada like those extreme couponers do, but we still have specials of the week at all of the grocery stores. To prove my point, (let's not compare to the dollar burgers, as I believe burgers are around 3 or 4 dollars at most of the fast food place and just a single burger is probably not going to fill mos...

Since I've recently been so inspired with yogurt, I decided to marinade some tofu, seitan (recipe below) and chicken with the Patak's tandoori paste.  I followed the recipe on the bottle (recipe below).  I mixed the chicken, seitan and tofu together to marinade.  (Probably should of separated the vegetarian and the non-veg..)  It's marinating at the moment, I will try it tonight and see if the vegetarian version taste as good as the chicken!  It's my first time making tandoori-anything, as I have never purchased Patak's product before.  I am using extra-firm tofu. Update: I just had my dinner.  And I have to say, chicken was the best.  The tofu was not bad, but I think next time I might cut it thinner as tofu didn't soak in the flavour of the paste as well as meat did.  The seitan was not bad either, but I think it might be better if I could somehow mix the paste in the seitan instead of just coating it when cooking.  I served it with ...

Another post about yogurt.  I am really discovering other ways of eating yogurt.  I made a simple chickpeas coconut green curry and to make it more creamy, I added some yogurt and the sauce was delicious!  Not a huge fan of the chickpeas in the curry, but I thought the sauce was thicker, creamier and overall better because it wasn't as spicy.  I think I will do that next time with another protein.  I'm not sure why the chickpeas didn't taste great.  I had it with bread instead of some rice.  I find the coconut curry is usually soupy and by adding the yogurt, it made it more like a sauce than soup.

I have always been a fan of yogurt.  Since I don't drink milk all that much anymore, I get all my calcium intake from yogurt every morning and cheeses.  My favourite yogurt flavour is vanilla and I prefer the 4% fat ones, the fatter the better! I dislike the 0%, although I still buy it, if it's on sale :P Yesterday, I was at the grocery store and I saw the plain yogurt. I always wanted to cook with it, but was just intimidated thinking that cooking with yogurt involves using cheese cloth.  And using cheese cloth just seems so complicated... But I was in an adventurous mood, so I put the container of plain yogurt in my basket. Boy, am I happy that I did.  Tonight, I mashed an avocado, scooped a few spoonfuls of yogurt, pinch of salt and some hot pizza oil for some kick and voila! a simple avocado spread.  I devoured 3/4 of the spread with some sliced baguette as a snack before heading to yoga tonight.  It was delicious! I use to made avocado sp...

I was away for 2 weeks, one of which I was in the Dominican Republic.  I definitely was not a vegetarian during that time.  Although I did eat lots of fruits and veggies, I also let myself go and ate more seafood and meat than I have in the past couple of months.  It was hard to hold myself back when the buffet of shrimps skewers and beef carpaccio at the steakhouse tasted sooooo good.  I went down south for a friend's wedding and while I couldn't control myself, there was one guest who has been vegetarian since his high school years.  I really admired him not being tempted by the lobster and all the other fancy non vegetarian dishes at the wedding.  I ate the lobster even when my stomach was in pain from an unknown reason for 2 days!  The most probably culprit must have been something I ingested, but other than eating fruits and veggies for breakfasts and lunches for 2 days, I still got tempted each time I set my eyes on the meat and seafood...