Where’s my carrot?

One of the last pork dishes my kids and I had before becoming vegetarians was potato chip-coated porkchops. I got this recipe from watching Next Door with Katie Brown, the then-Rachael Ray of the Lifestyle Network. (Hmm, I wonder where she is now. She had great but simple recipes and household tips.)

So, here it goes:

1. Get a bag of barbecue-flavored potato chips. Open the bag a little bit to let the air out. Then, sit on it. Or you can use a rolling pin. Haha!

2. Put some milk or beaten eggs into one bowl and flour in another.

3. Dredge the porkchop in flour. Dip in milk or egg. Coat with potato chip crumbs.

4. Fry in oil (any oil will do) or bake in the oven. I don’t know how long you leave it in the oven ‘coz I’ve never tried cooking it that way. I like frying.

Ordinarily, you just use ketchup as condiment. Give it a little tang and twist by adding a few dashes of Worcestershire Sauce into the ketchup.

Delish!

This is not your ordinary recipe, where you find a list of ingredients, in some sort of an order, followed by the directions on how to put them all together. Instead, I will walk you through the whole process so that you know the exact order the ingredients go into your pot.

1. Mince lots of garlic and chop 1 onion. Saute them in olive oil (one round in the pan).

2. Add ground vegetarian meat substitute (I use Morningstar Farms products)

3. Add:
1 ¼ cups ketchup (why ketchup? Coz it’s already complete in flavor.)
1 teaspoon, or more, Worcestershire Sauce (if you’re a pescetarian like me, you can use the regular one. Otherwise, use the vegan kind.)
1 teaspoon dried basil
1 teaspoon dried oregano
1 teaspoon dried thyme
salt and pepper, to taste
1 cup each frozen peas and corn (if you have frozen peas, corn and carrots together from your supermarket, that’s much better)

4. Mix well and simmer.

5. Prepare mashed potatoes. Mash these together:
6 large boiled potatoes (I don’t peel my potatoes)
¾ cup soy milk
4 tablespoons vegan margarine/butter
salt and pepper to taste

6. Put meat mixture into a greased baking dish, top with mashed potatoes and bake in a 350-degree oven for 30 minutes.

If you ask me, I don’t really follow measurements, I just play it by taste. For non-vegetarians, you can use meat and non-vegan ingredients if this got your stomach growling. Enjoy!

On 24 December 2006, during Christmas dinner, I ended my family’s pesco-vegetarian diet of almost 3 years. And the first non-vegetarian meal we had was grilled baby back ribs.

You may ask, ‘3 years?! Why did you give up?!’ Well, it’s not a matter of giving up, really. It was a a matter of taste, as in flavor. I missed the variety-ness of eating. Yes, hard-core vegetarians would say that you can diversify taste and flavors and recipes with vegetarian substitutes. I used to say that myself. In fact, my kids and I have gotten used to the vegetarian flavor. But if you’re like us, and you’ve had years of meat in your diet and you’re practically the only vegetarians in your entire immediate family, sometimes you just give in to the yearning.

Okay, you might ask again, ‘What the hell is a pesco-vegetarian?!’ Sometimes called pescetarians, Wikipedia defines them as vegetarians who eat fish, as well as shellfish, crustaceans, and the like, but exclude other meats or animal products. In our case, we also ate eggs, dairy and dairy products.

Being vegetarian was not easy at the outset. In my case, my parents thought I was nuts and threatened child abuse cases against me (just threats, of course) for depriving my kids protein from meat. But the truth is, alternative sources of protein can suffice. My kids didn’t become sickly or get any thinner. In fact, my 12-year-old even got bigger!

I guess it’s different for everybody. All I know is we did for health reasons and we don’t regret ever doing it. If we wanted to, we could always go back to it. Who knows, my meat eating days may be numbered again.

Those who are interested in exploring an alternative eating lifestyle may refer to the following for information (they helped us a lot the whole time we were vegetarians):

Information on veganism: The Vegan Society
Vegetarian recipes and information: GoVeg.com
Recipes and nutrition: The Vegetarian Resource Group
Recipes and other resources: VegWeb.com
Resources and discussion boards: VegSource.com

I have more stuff in my cupboard than I actually need, and actually consume. Whenever I’m in the supermarket, I get so overwhelmed by the multitude of products and their varieties that there seems to be a compulsion in me to try them all out. Wonderful packaging, colors, and free taste! Boy, am I reeled in!

Grocery shopping is a big weekend event for me. I love doing it. I can stay, and get lost, in a store for hours. Of course, the bigger the store, the more products available, the longer I stay. And these stores have all sorts of promotions to make you stay — free cake and coffee at opening hours, free-taste products on every aisle.

When i finally get home and start sorting out my groceries, I realize half, if not more than that, will stay in my cupboard until they’re ready to go…to the garbage bin. tsk, tsk, tsk.