In the winter months it gets hard to keep your sanity. Snow on the ground, a lack of sunshine, and being trapped in the house can make anyone go crazy.

To fight back against this impending rut, we tried vegetarianism for a week.We were curious if it would be a healthier way to live, to see if we would miss our carnivorous ways, and to just see if we could do it.

As part of the challenge, we set some ground rules: we had to make a salad, we had to make something exotic, we had to make something with tofu.

Here’s what we made:

• Black Beans and Rice
• Caramelized Tofu with Brussels Sprouts
• Chickpea and Cauliflower Curry
• Valencian Salad
• Mushroom Potato Crema with Roasted Poblano

Pictures and commentary after the jump.

Day 1:

Black Beans and Rice

Mark: Basically it’s sauteed veggies combined w/ canned black beans (once again: Goya Black Bean Soup == awesome) and spooned over rice. This time I added some brussels sprouts (love) for a little bit of crispy.

What makes this dish truly awesome is The Finish – taken from the Dinosaur BBQ Cookbook:

Sherry, red wine vinegar, tabasco, oregano, cumin, salt, brown sugar.

Dump that on your beans towards the end, and let it cook long enough to mix in with everything.

•Rating:
E: 5 tbone steaks out of 5
M: 4 tbone steaks out of 5 (I have the same problem with this dish that I have with pasta, lasagna, chili, mac & cheese, etc – every bite tastes the same. It may be good, but I get bored eating the same bite over and over)
• Would I make again: Yes
• Healthiness: 2 tbsp of veggie oil. We did use brown rice.
• Would I rather be a carnivore: We sometimes add leftover chicken or steak when making this, but it’s not necessary at all.

Day 2:

Caramelized Tofu with Brussels Sprouts

Mark: Ok, so I was totally against tofu going into this, like a yucky-faced 8 year-old.
This dish, however, was built for someone like me: fry everything and then coat it in sugar. It was a game of “hide the tofu” and it sorta worked.
Like a good boy I ate all of my tofu (and I didn’t throw up not once), but the tofu I did taste was rubbery and meh (so… it was tofu).
Outside of the beans, the whole dish was… well it was like cereal. Crunchy and coated sugar.

•Rating:
E: 2-3 tbone steaks out of 5
M: same
• Would I make again: probably not.
• Healthiness: Yes, in the sense that putting skim milk on your Lucky Charms is healthy. But really: no.
• Would I rather be a carnivore: yes.

Day 3:

Chickpea and Cauliflower Curry

Erica: I’ve never made curry before so really don’t know how this recipe compares. The main ingredients were chickpeas, cauliflower and okra with a garlic, red onion and ginger base–all of these I like separately (well, maybe not okra–which we couldn’t find fresh of course – so that may have been my problem with it) but I didn’t like the dish itself. The base flavors were really good, but I just didn’t like the combination of everything together. Mark said he enjoyed it much more than I did, but did say it wasn’t spicy enough for him (my tongue was pretty numb by the end of the meal). I also think something went wrong because it was pretty soupy.

•Rating:
E: 1 tbone steak out of 5
M: 3 tbone steak out of 5
• Would I make again: no
• Healthiness: Actually pretty darn healthy. I think the only thing to be considered bad was a little veggie oil.
• Would I rather be a carnivore: when it comes to this meal I don’t think it needed meat, but did need something else.

Day 4:

Valencian Salad

Mark: Very simple salad that was very delicious.
Not sure what else to say -but it was a nice combination of ingredients that tasted great.

•Rating:
E: 4 tbone steak out of 5
M: 4 tbone steak out of 5
• Would I make again: yes
• Healthiness: yes. Very.
• Would I rather be a carnivore: not tonight.

Day 5:

Mushroom Potato Crema with Roasted Poblano

Mark: I got a Rick Bayless cookbook for Christmas and this is the first thing we’ve made from it.
Let me tell you – this was crazy-awesome good. Creamy, spicy, nom nom nom.
It was so good that we both went back for seconds and ate all 4 servings.
It was so good that we forgot to take pictures.
It was so good we spent the next week cooking from the Bayless cookbook!

We didn’t take pictures, but you can make it yourself. The recipe is here.

•Rating:
E: 5 tbone steak out of 5
M: 5 tbone steak out of 5
• Would I make again: Yes yes, a thousand times yes.
• Healthiness: only bad thing was 1/2 c heavy cream. That and eating twice the recommended amount.
• Would I rather be a carnivore: Not necessarily, but a little bit of bacon would have made this super-crazy-awesome.

Conclusion:

I’m not sure how to wrap this up. We had no problems getting through the week, but on Saturday we went out for cheeseburgers. Take from that what you will.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010 at 8:52 am and is filed under Food, Projects. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.