by My Mom <3

Vegging Out

Alli Woods Frederick is a Vegetarian. There it is! I’ve said it! In the South this is akin to declaring that you sleep in on Sunday. It leaves one open to speculation. Folks may begin to wonder if you’re the kind of woman who sits on the porch, wears a gauzy dress, drinks anise from an old Duz tumbler and listens to recordings of 30’s radio broadcasts. A woman who eats no meat…hmm…What to think?

Southerners of another generation recall a day when there wasn’t much meat to be had.  They could throw together a mess of okra, some sweet taters and some hot water cornbread and call it a meal. These women could feed a vegetarian- as long as they left the bacon out of the equation (a tough task for any woman of the south). Today’s cooks typically expect meat to be the centerpiece of the meal. I find myself in that group. It is a challenge for me to find and prepare interesting non-meat meals, but I’m working on it.

The challenge of cooking vegetarian for Alli over the years has taught me some lessons, which I’ll share with you, so you won’t have egg (oops! make that eggplant) on your face:

Valuable Vegetariana

•  Cook a casserole for the family, but don’t pick the meat out to create a“vegetarian” portion. This doesn’t constitute a Vegetarian meal.
•  Cook vegetable dishes with vegetable broth. When you cook with meat-based broths (aka “dead animal juice”), it’s not vegetarian.
•  If you accidentally place meat on the vegetarian’s plate, don’t remove it and expect the vegetarian to eat from that plate.
•  Bacon is a meat. Serving a broccoli salad or chef’s salad with bacon bits in a “no.”
•  If you plan a crawfish boil or cookout, be sure to have something substantial and interesting for your vegetarian friend to eat. Chips and coleslaw alone aren’t very satisfying.
•  With Thanksgiving just around the corner, a word to you ranchers, farmers and hunters who may gather with the family during holidays. Be sensitive to discussions regarding slaughter, meat processing and field dressing. While we don’t need to walk on eggshells, we do need to be considerate, as always, with the feelings of others.
•  Develop a file of recipes that can be made in both meat and meatless versions. For example, you can prepare a vegetarian dish of black beans, corn, diced onion,jalapeno, chili, garlic and lime juice. You can take a portion of this concoction, add browned ground beef and chunky taco sauce, top it with cornbread batter and shredded cheese and bake it for the meat-eating diners at your table. Voila!  Or brown rice and broken uncooked spaghetti in olive oil and butter, add vegetable stock (2 parts stock to 1 part rice/pasta), simmer. When done add sautéed onion, garlic, chopped roasted red peppers and peas. Mix in a generous amount of shredded manchego cheese. Remove a portion of this dish and make it meaty by adding chunks of sautéed chorizo slices. Top both versions with more shredded cheese and bake till heated through. You can find this recipe on Rachael Ray’s Week in a Day page on  www.cookingchanneltv.com.

Rattle those pots and pans, stir those woks, fire up that grill and fuel your Vegetarian’s appetite with some simple, tasty, healthful dishes. With a little planning, it isn’t intimidating. Your Vegetarian will appreciate your consideration. You’ll enjoy the dishes yourself. And, as they say, “If you can’t ‘beet’ them, join them!”

BIO:

“Mom” is my mom.  She’s pretty freakin’ awesome.  She’s the most compassionate person I’ve ever know and is so full of love it makes Mother Teresa look like Hitler.  OK…so that may be a slight exaggeration, but it isn’t too far from the truth.  She has no idea how amazing she is (afterall, she puts up with me!).  She also has no idea I’m writing this bio for her, but we can just keep that between us, OK?