Tuesday, September 12, 2006

Beyond the cheese enchilada ...

The last time I went to my favorite Mexican restaurant, La Botana, there was a new special on the board - Quesadilla Nopalitos. It is a quesadilla stuffed with sauteed cactus strips, black beans and other goodies; and it is delicious. The specials always are. And that got me to thinking of a prime strategy vegetarians can use for good restaurant eating: Going off the menu.

Now, La Botana has a fine vegetarian section on its regular menu, with a lot of variety. I might never have ventured to try the specials until one day as I was ordering, the waiter asked whether I was vegetarian. It turned out that he was vegetarian, too. He particularly recommended the burrito caliente - stuffed with pinto beans, sauteed onions, and diced, fried potatoes, and covered with a chipotle-cream sauce. So I tried it, and was hooked on it, and on La Botana’s other specials.

For a while, the vegetarian enchiladas de mole nearly edged burrito caliente out as my favorite: Cheese enchiladas on a bed of rice and pinto beans, topped with mole sauce and spicy onions. (If you decide to try that one, be sure to be clear about what you want - there’s a similarly named dish on the regular menu that includes chicken.) In fact, I’ve ordered it so often that I haven’t yet tried the veggie chimichanga….

La Botana’s creative chef keeps dreaming up new specials; not all are vegetarian but many are. And the best part is, once you find a favorite they will make it for you, even after it no longer appears on the special board. La Botana is at 1547 Hanes Mall Blvd. in Winston-Salem, near the Wynnsong 12 movie theater.

In future posts, I’ll talk about other restaurants with specials to make a vegetarian’s heart beat a bit faster. Meanwhile, let me know if you know of any restaurants that have really special specials.

Friday, September 08, 2006

Marinade recipe

jennytarian requested marinade ideas, so I thought I would share my favorite marinade recipe. I adapted it from one I found on AllRecipes.com. I’m never that exact with the ginger and sesame oil—I just add until it tastes “right” to me.

Teriyaki Marinade

1/2 c. soy sauce
1/2 c. orange juice
1/4 c. packed brown sugar
1 or 2 cloves garlic, minced
1 t. grated fresh ginger (or more to taste—I like a lot)
1/4 t. sesame oil
Dash of black pepper

Combine all ingredients and pour over tofu or vegetables.

(You can change it up a bit by substituting lime or pineapple juice for the orange juice.)

What happened to your comments?

Apparently our blog is not a vegetarian. It also eats comments. If you tried to comment on our blog this week, your comment went into the gaping cyber maw. Settings have been changed to stop that from happening (knock on wood—but lightly, since trees are our friends).

Buying organic food

One of the things I would like to do is eat more organic foods, especially produce. Unfortunately, the high cost keeps me from buying as much as I would like. It can be hard to choose organic grapes at $4.99 a pound, when those juicy red conventional ones are sitting there at 99 cents a pound.

One way to cut costs is to concentrate your organic buying on those fruits and vegetables that tend to have more pesticides. You can download a wallet guide at http://www.foodnews.org/walletguide.php that tells you the 12 fruits and vegetables that consistently have the highest and lowest levels of pesticides. So if your budget forces you to choose, spend your money on organic apples instead of organic bananas.

The difference in price between conventional and organic items can vary greatly. On a recent shopping trip, I compared prices of a few items at random. There wasn’t much difference in the cost of leaf lettuce (conventional was $2.29; organic was $2.49) or green onions (conventional, $0.69; organic, $0.99). And the price of an organic avocado was actually the same as a conventional one—$1.99.

But there was a huge difference in other items, such as red peppers—$2.99 each conventional vs. $4.99 each organic—and the previously mentioned grapes.

Some organic products are easier to save a bit of money on. When organic rice milk is on sale, I can stock up, because it won’t expire until next April. So when you find a good price on something that will keep for awhile, it pays to buy a lot of it.

Speaking of organic food, there’s an Organicfest in downtown Asheville on Saturday the 9th (that’s tomorrow!) from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Its purpose is to celebrate “everything organic,” and there will be giveaways, free samples, music, food, crafts and more. I haven’t been to this before, but it sounds intriguing. You can find out more information here: http://www.organicfest.org

What are some of your tips for buying organic foods without breaking the bank?

Wednesday, September 06, 2006

Ask Julie and Cassandra a question

What do you want to know about being a vegetarian? What are your curious about? Got a comment? Post it here.

Tuesday, September 05, 2006

Welcome to the Veggin’ Out blog

Cassandra Sherrill, graphic artist for the Journal: I need to confess something right off the bat: I’m not actually a true vegetarian in many vegetarians’ eyes. I’m what some call a pesce-vegetarian (and others might call a pesky vegetarian). In other words, I eat fish, but no beef, chicken or pork. I think of myself as mostly a vegetarian, but some say there’s no such thing – like being slightly pregnant.
I turned toward vegetarianism because of health as well as ethical reasons. I wanted to be kinder to my cranky digestive system, and also avoid the hormones and antibiotics given to animals raised for food. I also have a deep love for animals, and thinking about them being killed so that I can eat them makes me feel queasy.

It has been a gradual process for me. One year I gave up beef; the next, pork; and the next, poultry. I don’t have any plans to give up fish, but one day, I might decide to do that, too.

Julie Harris, Journal library director: My main reason for being vegetarian is for the animals – I don’t even like to bite into a chocolate Easter Bunny, much less contribute to the horrors inflicted upon real, live animals…. So I try to learn as much as possible about animal-rights issues. My goal is to go completely vegan. (A vegan diet excludes eggs and dairy products as well as meat. Vegans also avoid the use of such animal products as leather and fur.) I see vegetarianism as a journey, as a way to get from the world as it is now to what it ought to be: a place of peace and plenty for all creatures.

But going veg also turned me into a “foodie.” There is so much variety and beauty in the vegetable kingdom, and so many delicious new tastes to be discovered. Now I read cookbooks like novels, and enjoy trying new things all the time.

We’ll be updating this blog twice a week, on Tuesdays and Fridays. We may post on other days for special occasions or if there is late-breaking news we think you’d like to know about quickly.

Well, enough about us; let’s talk about you. Won’t you tell us a little bit about yourself, and what interests you most about vegetarianism?