Adventures in Vegetarian Cooking.

I've been playing with the idea of becoming a vegetarian for years. This year it's taken on a life of it's own. I bought a vegan cupcake recipe book and for the most part, it's all been delicious.

Tonight, I have cooked with tofu.

I like tofu. I've had it before. I usually get some whenever I eat sushi and it's not as traumatic an experience as you would think. A few weeks ago when I was staying with my sister, she gave me free reign of her fridge and I found a tofu stir fry that she had made. Not wanting to eat a lot, or dirty a dish, I just grabbed a forkful and tried it and then ate the rest out of the tupperware like it was the first time I'd eaten since getting out of prison...

So I bought some tofu to give it a whirl. It's good and it's good for you. And while I'm not going vegetarian just yet, I'll see what introducing it into my diet does for me.

So I made what I make best, literally the only dish I make that resembles AND tastes like real food; sweet and sour sauce with peppers and onions on rice and substituted the chicken for tofu.



And it was great!! It tastes different because obviously, it's tofu and not chicken, but that doesn't bother me, what was different was that tofu is water based so it sweats a bit differently than chicken and I could taste it in the sauce. But it wasn't awful. Just different. It actually tasted pretty much the same. And looks good-ish, as you can see from the picture.

I'm not going to turn this into a thing. I blog about my life so people who don't see me get an insight into the thrilling life of a grad student living in Texas. And part of that is my newfound struggle with my enjoyment of meat and belief that it's ok to eat animals, because I really do believe that, but my awareness of cruel practices in how we treat animals.

To the point where I'm watching commercials for the new "Planet of the Apes" movie and reading social commentary into it. I know it's just a sci-fi fun movie, but I see it as a possible future if we don't start taking care of the animals we're in charge of. We have a responsibility as humans to use our knowledge and humanity to, not only, treat the animals who sacrifice their lives for us to eat them with some respect, but to think about ourselves in this as well!

We put this into our bodies. Animals that have been fed hormones and been mistreated, probably suffering from some kind of chicken depression or something, and we're going to eat that?! It just makes less and less sense to me the more I think about it and the more I read up on it.

But like I said. I do like meat. I do. And I'd prefer to do something a little more natural like eating grassfed beef and free range eggs, things like that, but I'm not sure how receptive El Paso is to modern (anything) notions like this. So I may have to go all vegetarian while I'm here.

Nothing's decided. It's just something that's been weighing on my mind and my heart. And if you know me at all, you know that my over developed sense of justice can't let something I find to be unfair stand without having yelled at it for a while.

Life is cruel but we don't have to be.

Consider this blog the beginning of my rant. It might take a while, but I always come full circle.