No meat so far

I'm almost two weeks into the new year, and I've had no meat so far.
You could say that twoo weeks isn't much to brag about, and so far it's been pretty easy since I've had most meals at home. But it takes more planning since we are one meat eater and one vegetarian in this house. The meat eater has made it very clear that he has no intentions of giving up meat.
Yesterday I had lunch with two co-workers at a restaurant. The menu offered two vegetarian options: Classic french onion soup (au gratin), and a ratatouille on a bed of mushroom risotto. I chose the latter, and it was very good and tasty. But all the other dishes either contained meat, fish or shellfish.

I had completely forgotten that I have a two day seminar coming up. We're starting tomorrow, and we will be staying at a hotel for two days. I called the hotel today and asked if I could pre-order a vegetarian dish for lunch and dinner, and they were very okay with it. That was such a relief. Now I don't have to think about planning any meals for two days. The next meal I need to cook is dinner on Friday. I haven't decided what to make yet, but I have a couple of pounds of red beets in the fridge that I need to use soon. I think I'll start there, and work them into a meal. Somehow! ;-)

New York Mayor wants less salt in restaurant food

First New York City required restaurants to cut out trans fat. Then it made restaurant chains post calorie counts on their menus. Now it wants to protect people from another health scourge: salt.

On Monday, the Bloomberg administration plans to unveil a broad new health initiative aimed at encouraging food manufacturers and restaurant chains across the country to curtail the amount of salt in their products.

The plan, for which the city claims support from health agencies in other cities and states, sets a goal of reducing the amount of salt in packaged and restaurant food by 25 percent over the next five years.

Link to NYTimes: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/11/business/11salt.html?hp

Salt has been linked to high blood pressure and obesitry, and I think the new York Mayor is doing everyone a favor by starting this campaign.

“We all consume way too much salt, and most of the salt we consume is in the food when we buy it,” said Dr. Thomas Farley, the city health commissioner, whose department is leading the effort. Eighty percent of the salt in Americans’ diets comes from packaged or restaurant food. Dr. Farley said reducing salt from those sources would save lives.

Vegetarian lasagna

Have you ever tried to take a picture of baked lasagna, successfully?
Whatever ligt, angle and cheese used as topping, the lasagna always comes out as a goey mush.
It could have been improved with some grean lettuce leaves and tomatoes, but unfortunately, I had neither on hand today.

Luckily, most of us have had lasagna before so we know that this goey mush is indeed a great mix of tomatoes, cheese and delicious velvety pasta.

I start making my lasagna by cooking a tasty vegetable tomato sauce. I layer it with lasagna plates and ricotta cheese. Somtimes, when my local food store is out of ricotta (- or I'm too cheap to use ricotta since it costs twice as much as the alternative) I'm known to use cottage cheese that I mash with a fork instead. If you want my honest opinion (- if you don't, stop reading here), it works just as well. The strong flavors in the vegetable tomato sauce will overpower the delicate and distinctive taste in the ricotta cheese. It's the texsture I'm looking for in this dish.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
While oven is heating up, make the lasagna.

Tomato sauce.

1 Tbsp canola oil
2 small or 1 medium onion, peeled and chopped
2 carrots, peeled and cut into small pieces
2 celery sticks, rinsed and sliced

1 small boc (1/2 cup) tomato puree
1 cup frozen spinach
1 can (1 pound) chopped tomatoes
2 Tbsp dried oregano

Salt and pepper to taste

2 1/2 cup ricotta cheese (1 1/2 pound)
lasagna plates
1 medium ball of mozarella cheese
2 Tbsp grated parmesan

Saute onion in the canola oil until transludent. Add carrots and celery sticks, and saute on medium heat for 5-10 minutes.

Add tomato paste, stir well until the onion, carrots and celery pieces are coated well.
Add chopped tomatoes, oregano and salt an pepper. Let boil for 20 minutes, or until carrots are almost done.
Add the frozen spinach. When the spinach is well blended into the sauce, the sauce is done.

My lasagna form is a deep 8 x 4 inch baking dish. Use whatever size that pleases your crowd.

Start with the vegetable tomato sauce.
Layer half of the tomato sauce in the bottom of the dish. Cover with lasagna plates. Spread half of the ricotta cheese over the lasagna plates. Make sure it's spread out evenly. Reserve 1/2 cup of the tomato vegetable sauce on the side, and spread the rest over the ricotta cheese. Cover with lasagna plates, and spread the reserved tomato vegetable sauce on top. This is done to make sure there will be enough moist to bake the lasagna plates througly since the ricotta cheese don't hold enough moisture.
Spread the ricotta cheese on top, cover dish with aluminum foil, and bake for 20 minutes in the oven. After 20 minutes, remove the aluminus foil, spread the mozarella cheese on top, and sprinkle parmesan cheese on top of the mozarella cheese. (I add parmesan as neither the ricotta nor mozarella cheese holds a lot of taste. The parmesan adds an extra flavor that goes well with the tomato and vegetable sauce).

Bake for another 10 minutes, or until the cheese on top is melted and had taken on a golden color.

Enjoy!

Curry Lentil Soup

This soup is perfect for cold days. It's a classic combination of curry, garlic and ginger, and it tastes great.
(From Cuisine at Home)

CURRY-LENTIL SOUP

"Curry powders vary in spiciness - use more or less depending on how hot you prefer your soup."

INGREDIENTS:

1 yellow onion, finely diced
2 T. garlic, minced
2 T. fresh ginger, peeled, minced
1 T. curry powder
1/2 t. crushed red pepper flakes (I used 1/8 tsp very hot red pepper flakes)
Pinch of sugar
4 cups vegetable broth
1/2 cup red lentils
Juice of 1 lime
1/4 cup heavy cream (coconut milk also works)
Salt to taste

Garnish- I never serve the soup with garnish on weekdays, only when I serve it to guests).

1/4 cup sweetened, shredded coconut, toasted
1/4 cup dry roasted peanuts, coarsely chopped
2 T. scallions, coarsely chopped
2 T. coarsely chopped fresh mint leaves

DIRECTIONS:

Saute onion in melted butter in a large saucepan over medium heat, 3-5 minutes.

Add garlic, ginger, curry powder, red pepper flakes, and sugar; saute about 1 minute.

Add broth, lentils, and lime juice. Simmer, uncovered, until lentils are soft, 15 - 20 minutes. (I simmered it about 30 minutes). Remove soup from heat.

OBS: DO NOT bring the soup back to boil after you have added the heavy cream. The lime in the soup will cause it to separate. Re-heat soup slowly over low heat and don't let it boil.

Stir in cream and salt.

Garnish soup with coconut, peanuts, scallions, and mint. (I omitted this).


Makes 4 Cups

From Cuisine at Home

My vegetarian adventure

I've decided to go vegetarian for the next 365 days!

As it is, I actually started on April 1st.
One of my friends thought it was an April Fools Day joke, but I was a few days short of my Easter vacation and it seemed like a good idea to start. Besides it's spring; A lot of fresh vegetables will show up on the market in the next few weeks, and I will have a lot of delicious ingredients to choose from.

The idea to become a vegetarian didn't come to me overnight. First, I love vegetables. Second, I have grown more and more sceptical towards modern farming as the animals live on restricted diets and they are given minimal space to live on. Modern breeding have turned many animals into meat producing giants - with large bodies and feet that struggle to carry the weight. I asked myself, will I continue to support this business?

A vegetarian diet is also supposed to be healthy, but expensive and time consuming.
I am curious to see if this is true.
In this house hold we spend $1000 on food and grocery items every month. I hope my project won't add to an already bulging food budget.

In the weeks prior to my adventure, I spent many hours on the Internet, searching for vegetarian recipes and nutrition. I also started a subscription on Vegetarian Times - a magazine dedicated to vegetarian cooking.

I live a fairly busy life. I won't have time to cook time consuming meals every day. I eat out several times a month, and vegetarian menu charts are few and far between here. I think the restaurant business will give me a hard time in the months to come, but I'm crossing my fingers.

Actually, I met my first 'wall' during my Easter holiday. I was starving, and dropped by a nice lunch restaurant. As a meat eater, I have loved the place and eaten there many times in the past. I have seen vegetarian dishes on the menu, so I thought it was a safe place to start.
Not so. On this day the chef was out, and the temp chef had made two dishes: Meat balls or smoked salmon.

I told the waiter I don't eat meat.
'You'll have fish then', she said and that was that!

I found three restaurants that offered vegetarian dishes during my holiday, but the menu was repeated every day and to be honest, it will probably take a while until I eat mushroom risotto, vegetarian lasagna (which contained too much salt, by the way) or broccoli and gnocchi in cheese sauce again. Two weeks on this diet took the fun out of dining out.

I hope my holiday just turned out to be a small bump in the road.
I'm still excited about my project and I can't wait to try some of the new vegetarian recipes I have found.

Stay tuned!