Chickpea Salad with Chicken Sausage

I made a variation of a chick pea salad last week. This salad is feta, chickpeas, spinach, sundried tomatoes, pesto, and greek dressing. It's easy to make and no cooking is required. I decided to eat it with the spinach fontina chicken sausages I had left in the freezer. I grilled the sausages on our mini grill, and sliced them up to mix with the salad. They went so well together! And on top of that I opened the bottle of Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc I had bought earlier in the semester. I love this region's wines, and I really developed a taste for Sav Blancs when I was abroad. The oaky sweetness of the wine went extremely well with this dish and the dish made the wine taste better as well. I was impressed that I was able to recognize that this wine would go really well with this meal and it made me happy. I've started trying to pair alcohol that I enjoy with meals that I like. It's another whole set of culinary skills!

Quorn Fajitas

Quorn is a meatless protein that is synthesized from fungi. One of my vegetarian friends had been telling me about it for awhile now. They don't sell it in the states, but they do in Australia so I decided to get some to try as my last involved meal here. I got the fajita kind, it was sliced into strips and marinated in this awesome fajita seasoning (below). I fried up some peppers and onions in olive oil and bbq seasoning and then added the quorn at the end. It really was like making a fajita with meat, and was really simple.

To add to the meal I made some homemade refried beans… these were kinda guess work than anything else. I basically smashed up kidney beans with a fork and mixed in some cheese and heated them up (below right). I then assembled my fajita! I had mild salsa, shredded mozzarella, retired beans, and the fajita mixture. 

I assembled my beast (below) and as per usual with fajitas, it was an incredible mess, but it was a delicious mess! I really liked the Quron. I tasted like the seasoning and the consistency as actually like chicken. The peppers were cooked perfectly too. My only compliant is that it could have used so avocados, guac, or sour cream to even out the spiciness of the seasoning and the salsa. The reason I didn't buy any is because there is so little time left I didn't really want to buy too much extra food. It was still a great meal though. And I have enough fajita mix for 2 more meals. I used it to make a fajita salad last night and tonight I'm going to make a fajita quesadilla. This was a great way to get some protein and this is a really interesting way of getting it since it doesn't involve any chemical intensive agriculture. Right in line with my flexitarian ideals!

Australian Pies

When I think pie, I think blueberry, apple or pumpkin. America is famous for it's large sweet pies. Apple pie and cherry pie are American traditions for the Fourth of July, and pumpkin pie and pecan pie are Thanksgiving staples. America loves it's pies. But in the States pie is a dessert.

In Australia, a pie is a small savory pastry stuffed with meat, cheese, potatoes, and/or vegetables. And here beef pies are as uniquely Australian as apple pies are american. They are something you grab for lunch, or a light dinner. And boy are they fantastic!! I've been in Australia for a week and I've already had two pies. the first was a veggie pie (above right), and the second was a pumpkin lentil feta pie (top left). Because of my flexitarianism I really liked that most pie places have at least one vegetarian pie!

The veggie pie had carrots, celery, broccoli, and potatoes in it. It had a crunchy crust and melted cheese on top. I was so yummy. I tasted like a hand held chicken pot pie, minus the chicken. We ate them in Manley while waiting for the ferry to take us back to Sydney.

The second pie was my favorite of the two. The pastry was soft and flaky and it covered the top of the pie. This pie had to be eaten with a fork. It was so savory and oh so good. The lentils made it taste really homey and I loved it. I should note that pumpkin in Australia is a bit different than what we have in the states (see below). They're like a cross between a squash and a pumpkin. To me they tasted like a cross between them as well. I really liked it actually. It's nice to try something different from what we have at home and still like it.

Pies are so big here that they have a pie chain restaurant called Pie Face. They are here as frequently as McDonalds are in the states. I have yet to try a Pie Face pie but I can't wait because I can't wait to eat more of these!

Superbowl "Mini" Pizzas

 I'm not a big football fan, but my Dad is. So every year when I was home (which is basically every year except for the past two when I was in STL), my Mom would make a ton of fun snacks and we would watch the game together. This year was nice because all four of us were home so we got to spend the time together, even if the game wasn't very exciting. What was exciting was my Dad's suggestion of what we do for snacks. He suggested making some homemade mini pizzas. It was a great idea! We ended up making 6 different kinds of pizza with various toppings and then we all got to taste them. It was also really cool because we all helped cook them together. My Dad worked in a pizza parlor when he was in college so he was spinning the dough to flatten it out, after a couple of tries he remembered how to do it! The pizzas we made were mostly NOT vegetarian, but since my Mom made her baked Salami (see below) which is one of my two meat exceptions (the other being Chicago hot dogs from my favorite hot dog joint), I was eating meat that day anyway so I was able to taste the meat ones as well. From left to right in the first picture above then the second we made chicken sausage, gouda and roasted pepper pizza, tomato and fresh mozzarella pizza, Bacon, Colby Jack and Mushroom pizza, prosuttio and parmesan pizza, pepperoni and mozzarella pizza, and pear, balsamic, and goat cheese pizza. A creative and diverse bunch of pizzas! My favorite was the bacon one, I don't know if that was because it was the best of the bunch or just because I haven't have bacon in soooo long that I missed it so much ;) My runner up was the chicken sausage one. I loved the gouda and peppers. it had a really nice smoky flavor to it. Ultimately we had about half of the pizza left over after we all had at it. So that meant some leftover pizza for the next week. I love cold pizza so I was quite happy about that.

Thoughts on these pizzas:

• The crust of the bacon one was the best because it was thin and crispy instead of doughy. Ironically, this was the one dough that I worked on and I had done such a "crappy" job (see above its not circular) that I was taken off dough duty. But it turned out that it wasn't too thin after all and even though it looked the ugliest it tasted the best. Haha goes to show presentation and taste don't always match!
• The parm prosuttio was really salty so it was probably my least favorite, it needed something to cut the salt. I think my mom wanted to put fresh greens on top (which would have done it) but the rest of us didn't want that so we ended up without it. 
• My sister brushed all of the crusts with garlic olive oil which crisped the crust nicely when baked, and also gave it a good flavor. This step is critical in order to get crust that tastes like something!
• If I was making this for me only, and not my meat eating family, I would probably made a veggie supreme kinda pizza with a ton of different veggies on it, but alas it was not to be this time around. 

I would love to do this again using what we learned from this time. Such a fun thing to do!

Venison Tenderloin with Mushrooms

So my boyfriend cooked dinner for me and his mom on Saturday. He's an awesome cook, and it was a wonderful evening. It was really fun to share a delicious and thoughtful meal with the two of them.

Now I know a lot of you are probably wondering what a venison dish is doing on a flexitarian's blog, so let me explain. I don't usually eat red meat due to the high environmental impact that it has, but since I'm a flexitarian and there are sometimes exceptions to this. In this case, sustainably hunted deer has a very low environmental impact, especially comparatively to factory farm raised beef and pork. This is because there is not the system of fossil fuels that goes into raising this type of meat. Also deer hunting in the midwest states is actually a necessity to keep the population down. Since humans have killed off all the other natural predators of deer in the area (mainly wolves) their population grows unchecked. This leads to disease, starvation, and environmental degradation. That means that regulated deer hunting is a good to thing, needed to maintain the forest ecosystems in the midwest. It was really nice to be able to have a meal with meat in it that was consistent with my values.

As I said my boyfriend made this. It was my first time tasting venison, so we were both a little nervous about whether or not I would like it. And I did! I very much enjoyed it. It tasted like a very good, very lean beef tenderloin. I only really like very lean meat, so I liked that a lot about the dish. My boyfriend grilled it so it had a nice smoky flavor, and he marinated it in a wonderful sauce. We ate it with delicious sautéed mushrooms and onions. The combination of flavors was very complex and wonderful, and I very much enjoyed this meal! We also had corn on the cob on the side (see above). A treat I usually associate with summer, so it was a nice surprise to have it in the fall. We also had a wonderful italian salad (see below) with the meal. It had artichoke hearts, peppers, tomatoes, and red onions in it. And it was yummy.

A wonderful meal with wonderful company. It was so nice of him to cook for me :)

Potluck Peppers and Flexitariansim

I've already done a post on my stuffed pepper recipe so I'll be brief in respect to the peppers. I had mentioned that this is a good and easy appetizer dish, so when the opportunity to make this for a group I seized it. My lab group had a World Series watch party/potluck for the 4th game, and I made the hummus/spinach/sun-dried tomato stuffed peppers pictured above for it. I decided to make this recipe, not only because they are easy and yummy, but also because this recipe is both vegan and gluten free. There are several people in the lab group of have dietary restrictions and I wanted to make sure I could bring something that everyone could enjoy. Due to the fact that the recipe part of this post is rather short, I thought that this would be a good opportunity to talk about my flexitarianism. The rest of this post is to explain why I don't eat red meat. If you're uninterested feel free to skip. I tend to get a lot of questions (and snide comments) about my choice, so I thought I try to explain it in a helpful manner here.

For those who don't know, flexitartianism is defined (according to wikipedia) as a vegetarian who eats meat sometimes.

When I first arrived on Wash U's campus my freshman year I was much more in control of my diet than I had ever been before in my life. Our Dining Services is awesome, and we are not at all limited by choices so it was really up to me to decide what I was eating everyday. What I ended up doing (somewhat unconsciously at first) was cutting all red meat, and most chicken, out of my diet. This was partly due to the fact that I don't really love red meat and also that there are so many vegetarian options here that I found my meatless choices expanded rather than limited.

As this dietary change was gradually taking place, I also began my first semester in the Green Events Commission. A student group that provides free environmental consulting services to other student groups. We meet with students and suggest ideas of how they can make their events more sustainable. One of the first things that I learned in the GEC is that when trying to reduce carbon footprint, vegetarian is the way to go. I learned that a huge amount of energy (fossil fuels) and resources (water and land) go into raising and shipping food, and a really good way to cut back on fossil fuel usage is to be a conscientious consumer. There are many factors that go into making this hierarchy.

Firstly, is simple ecology. Energy enters an ecosystem at the level of primary producers. It then travels up trophic levels as organisms eat other organisms. Unfortunately due to metabolism, 90% of energy is lost every time you go up a trophic level (see below). So thinking about this in terms of the human/farm food chain. A person gets 10% of the energy that a ear of corn gained from photosynthesis. However, if we move humans up one level in the food chain by having them eat a steak instead of corn, then they are getting only 10% of the energy of the cow, which only had 10% of the energy from the grass it ate. So ultimately the human is getting only 1% of the energy originally input into the system from photosynthesis. Using this basic model you can see that energy wise it is more efficient to eat lower on the food pyramid.

http://www.oocities.org/rjwarren_stm/2P4/EnergyPyramid.html

When you also take into account that in America's system of agriculture every product takes fossil fuels to raise, in the form of transportation and energy costs, and that, in order to eat meat in our system, fossil fuels are required to grow and ship the feed to the animals who will consume it, and then to ship the meat to stores, it takes more energy to produce meat than vegetables. Hence, red meat has a greater carbon footprint.

Now there are always exceptions. Locally sourced, sustainably produced meat has a significantly lower carbon footprint than typical industry meat. And the level of impact of fish is subject to a lot of variability based on the species, fishing methods, and farm-raised or wild caught. So generally its hard to know about fish unless you know exactly where it comes from. But the general rule is that red meat has the largest impact, then poultry, then vegetables.

When I learned this I took a step back, and evaluated my own habits. I noticed that I was pretty much cutting out red meat already, and it wouldn't be to hard to cut back on poultry as well. So I decided to make a dietary change. I started out eating no red meat and chicken every other day. Since then, I've changed to eating poultry once a week. This change placed my diet into the realm that is Flexitarian.

My reasoning behind making this change is it is my own personal way to reduce my carbon footprint. I believe the term is Environmental Vegetarianism. And hopefully you can see by the content of this blog that it has not detracted from my enjoyment of food in any way. It's a lifestyle choice that I made, and though one I can recommend, one that I wouldn't unwillingly force onto anyone else who did not chose it.

When I mention my flexitarianism to someone I get a variety of reactions. They range from interest, to skepticism, to outright mocking. I have found that sometimes people tend to take dietary choices as an affront to whatever their own dietary lifestyle is. It makes me a little sad. Because my choice to reduce my own meat intake, is a personal one, not a judgement on someone else. Most people who have an voluntary alternate dietary lifestyle do it for personal reasons, whether they be religious, animal rights related, economically related, health related or environmental. Therefore, as long as they are not openly insulting your own diet the first response should be to respect their values, not to be judgmental. And if you have a voluntary vegetarian or vegan diet, be conscientious that others' dietary choices are their own personal decisions as well.

I also meet a lot of people who are genuinely curious about what a flexitarian is. And a lot of time I get some really intelligent follow up questions. I do my best to answer them in my own context, and to let those questions help me define and redefine what choices follow my values. For example, I had a friend ask me if there was a small farm that grew its own feed sustainably, fed it to cows sustainably, and then sold the meat locally would I eat it? I thought about it, and yes, I would. I  identify as a flexitarian. I'm flexible. I set my dietary constraints by my own values, and if circumstance changes, then my diet will be able to as well.

So instead of suggesting that everyone who reads this rather long post reduce their meat consumption, I will instead leave you with this. Choose one thing about your lifestyle, and make a small change to be more sustainable. It doesn't have to be something big, it could be bringing reusable bags with you when you shop, or biking to work once a week, all that matters is that it matters to you. Make a small contribution to leave a slightly better world behind. I'm a big believer that the small everyday things do matter, and that over the long term they do add up. My flexitarianism is my little addition to a more sustainable tomorrow.