Random Meals

So the other day, M came over for dinner while we planned our guys' birthday dinner (one's is the 15th, the other the 25th so we're having one dinner for them). Due to all of the cooking but poor planning last week (and this week too), the meal wound up being strange.

I had leftover cheese sauce from Mac n cheese, and some potatoes that were super soft, so I threw together a potato gratin. I also had a loaf of stale bread that I beat with a rolling pin to make breadcrumbs for the gratin. :-P

After putting that in the oven, I realized that we also had some ground beef (from the meat sauce) in the fridge that needed to be cooked statim. So I threw it in a pan, and realized that we had tortillas in the fridge, as well as lettuce and half of a can of olives. I found the last jar of salsa in the house (and whoooooooooeeeeeeeeee is it spicy!), and grated some mozzerella since we're out of any other kind other than gruyere.

So yeah -- tacos and potato gratin. Fabulous. And for dessert I pulled a couple slices of frozen Turtle Bread (cashew and chocolate chips yum!) out of the freezer, toasted them, and put butter and cinnamon sugar on them. M also brought chocolate covered dried strawberries. And we planned. I'll do a separate post on that.

Omnivores All

I am currently enacting a strange dichotomy: yesterday, Mister and I pledged to eat less meat (more on that later), and I am frying lamb meatballs. The meatballs are going to go in the freezer -- I had had frozen ground lamb, and thawed it the other day but wound up not using it. So, it must be cooked sooner rather than later, and meatballs freeze nicely. 1.3 lbs of meat made about 5 dozen small meatballs. I threw in some ground coriander, ground cumin, black pepper, paprika, an egg, a clove of minced garlic, and diced half of an onion. FYI? It's really hard to get tiny pieces of onion. I chopped it smaller than I think I've ever chopped onion, and they still stood out blazingly white against the meat. The last batch is frying merrily, and the rest are in my ghetto rig to drain the grease. It's a cooling rack suspended over a casserole dish. Luckily my cooling racks are a grid instead of the parallel lines that my mother has -- the meatballs would have wiggled through.

Regarding the less meat stance: On February 11th we packed up the kitchen and had been eating out exclusively. Well, for quite a bit of that (the later end especially), Mister and I have had ... unpleasant bowel experiences. On Wednesday, I made a vegetarian Moroccan root vegetable stew (I should post the recipe later -- very simple) as the first meal cooked in our new place. It was delicious, and following that, we had normal bowel movements. But last night, we went out with Mister's cousin to celebrate his 21st birthday, and ate at a barbeque place -- unhappy tummies that night.

Looking over our eating habits, we realized that we think of eating meat as a treat (we don't usually cook it), and so usually order it when out. But eating out for two weeks straight is a lot of meat! The only time we HADN'T had cramping and discomfort was the vegetarian stew that I'd made! Because he likes eating out, Mister lamented for a bit about the lack of vegetarian entree choices and about how Americans like meat and think similarly to how we do (that it's a treat, and one eats it when going out).

When looking at this information, it became clear to us that we need to reduce our meat intake, and Mister said that he wanted to eat it once a week, max. When I said "sure babes, I have no problems being flexitarian" he became a little huffy and responded "no, that's called being an omnivore!" Which got me thinking about so many of the food movements -- their call for less meat, but needing a new label. It needs a new label because "Everyone Knows" that humans are omnivores, but in order to differentiate between regular average human diet and what's healthier for you, it needs a shiny new title -- otherwise most folks would just ignore it. But a Movement -- aha, there's something interesting going on! It just makes me think of Alice's Restaurant:

And the only reason I'm singing you this song now is cause you may know somebody in a similar situation, or you may be in a similar situation, and if you're in a situation like that there's only one thing you can do and that's walk into the shrink wherever you are ,just walk in say "Shrink, You can get anything you want, at Alice's restaurant.". And walk out. You know, if one person, just one person does it they may think he's really sick and they won't take him. And if two people, two people do it, in harmony, they may think they're both faggots and they won't take either of them. And three people do it, three, can you imagine, three people walking in singin a bar of Alice's Restaurant and walking out. They may think it's an organization. And can you, can you imagine fifty people a day,I said fifty people a day walking in singin a bar of Alice's Restaurant and walking out. And friends they may thinks it's a movement.

And that's what it is, the Alice's Restaurant Anti-Massacre Movement, and all you got to do to join is sing it the next time it come's around on the guitar.

I think we should take back Omnivorism. I'm not a flexitarian, I'm not a pescatarian, I'm not a vegetarian or vegan -- I'm just an omnivore.

Saving Some Links

Louisa May Alcott's Apple Slump
Medieval Apple Tart
Random Apple Recipes
Basic Dessert Egg Rolls
Eat Wild -- a site to help find grass fed meats and eggs
Growing Herbs for the Medicine Cabinet
Eating Out of Your Pantry

Just cleaning up my browser!