Day 6

Today I spent over an hour researching vegetarian recipes at Barnes and Noble. Because I am poor, I wrote down the names of the books to reserve them at the library. I found some good ones that I’ll be investigating. I do think, however, that cookbooks without pictures are a complete waste. (I don’t have my favorites list right now, but I will fill those in later.) I ended up sitting in the vegetarian cookbook aisle, thumbing through about eight books and a handful of magazines, sipping a yummy white mocha.

Many of these cookbooks include a hefty section of breakfast and brunch recipes. This is somewhat offensive as any idiot knows that the least amount of meat is consumed before noon. Here’s one of my favorites, converted from the classic Brit recipe.

Veggie Toad in the Hole
4 frozen Morningstar Farms vegetarian sausages
4 eggs
1 T butter
4 slices of your favorite bread

Heat oven on broil setting to 500 degrees. Warm an oven-safe skillet on medium-high heat. Cut butter into five small pieces, and let one piece sizzle in the skillet now. Add the sausages and turn to brown on two to three sides. When brown, arrange in skillet to make little sections in the pan. Melt one piece of butter in each section, and crack one egg into each area. Let sizzle two minutes, then place the entire skillet into the oven. Bake 4-5 minutes, then add the slices of bread over the top of each section. Bake an additional 1-2 minutes, until bread is browned on the top. Great breakfast for four with a fruit salad.

A few things that looked really good were polenta frites with garlic mayo, portabello mushroom burgers, and creamy asparagus-parmesan risotto. I will also be heading to the local spice shop this week. For me, it’s inspirational to have fresh spices and flavored salts and oils on hand. It helps me to create new things.

One of my problems is that garlic and onions tend to make me feel bloated, but I need them for flavor. Many of the vegetarian recipes are entirely based on onions or garlic for flavor. If onion and garlic is thoroughly cooked, I can sometimes eat it. The problem is that my digestive system has problems with them sporadically, not consistently. So I’m never sure whether it’ll be okay. Obviously, my system’s reaction to these recipes, even if it tastes awesome, taints my ratings system and affects whether or not I’ll repeat the experiment, even just to test whether I’ll react the same.

What I ate today. . .
Baked egg with two veggie sausage patties and a piece of ww toast, half a venti chai, homemade refried bean nachos with avocado, sour cream, a handful of grated cheddar, and salsa with bite-size chips, passion tea, two raspberry jam-filled thumbprint cookies, a bowl of tomato soup with reduced fat crackers.