I’ve been doing searches for vegetarian food.  My mom talked to me about getting Vegetarian Times magazine, but I’d rather read it online to save paper and money.

So I went online to look for recipes, and I figured “most popular recipes” was a good place to start.  And you want to know what four of the first recipes were???

• Glazed Chocolate-Avocado Cupcakes (avocado?  gross!)
• Peanut Butter–Oatmeal Cookies
• Thumbprint Cookies
• Raspberry Oatmeal Bars

Really?  These desserts are vegetarian?  No kidding.  Why would they talk about desserts on a vegetarian website?  Of course these desserts are meat-less.

That’s absolutely ridiculous.   THIS is why I’m having a hard time finding meat-less recipes.  But here are some that I did find that looked delicious:

• Bean Burritos
• Spaghetti with spinach and mushrooms
• Veggie burgers with tahini mayonnaise (warning: video!)
• Penne alla norma (penne with plum tomato and eggplant)

Surprisingly, most of the ones that looked delicious were from the Martha Stewart website.  They had a whole vegetarian section on their food blog section.  It was actually really good.

I already planed all of this week’s dinners.  It makes it easier for my mom if we have everything planned out, and no one has to think about it.  Tomorrow night we’ll just have left over lasagna, Monday is tacos (I won’t be home, so it’s something my brother enjoys), Tuesday is salmon with butternut squash, Wednesday is veggie pot pie, Thursday is eggplant parmesan, and Friday is oven crisped chicken and mashed potatoes. I got a lot of good recipes today, so I’m hoping that I’ll expand my meal plans.   Those bean burritos looks fabulous.  If I do try new things,  I’ll write about them.  That way, it’ll help me remember what I’ve tried and what I thought about each meal.

I’ve been trying to clean up more lately.  I grabbed all of my old magazines from my room and went through them yesterday.  I rip out the recipes that look delicious, or outfits that I like, or kitchen designs that interest me.  I save what I want, and recycle the remained of the magazine.  I probably recycled 15 yesterday, and I still have more to go.  I got another Marie Claire in the mail yesterday, and I am so sick of magazines, I want to just chuck it in the recycling bin without looking through it.

This morning, I finally got up the energy to go down and organize the basement.  After I moved out of my apartment (in March 2006), everything has just been thrown down into the basement.  Dylan has some of my stuff with him in Worcester at his apartment, but I have shelves on my own things downstairs  (dishes, pots and pans, utensils, furniture, silverware, lights).  I have a designated spot for my stuff, but there was a lot of things that weren’t over in my corner.  I went and organized everything, and also did a pretty good job at cleaning out a lot of junk.  We had old coffee mugs, three old phones, empty tupperware containers, a Flutie Flaked empty box, beer mugs…. tons of crap.  I ended up making two piles, trash and salvation army.  I was able to get rid of a ton of stuff, and now the basement is a little neater.  I pulled each of my parents aside and said “Do you want this?”  Sometimes the answer was yes (my dad saved six Cleveland Indians plastic beer cups that he got at Jacobs Field), but more often the answer was a quick “throw it away.”  My mom was the hesitant one who wanted to save weird things.  We had one very tall and slender glass cup that I think Megan had gotten at Crate and Barrel.  It was a single item, and my mom wanted to save it.  “It’s a nice glass,” she said.  And I said “yes, but there’s only one of them.”  She told me to give it to Dylan, and he said “I don’t friggen want it.”  So I put it in the give-away pile.  No one was using it, and it was silly to have it.  Some items got moved upstairs so we’d start using them (a pint glass, an Arc Info coffee mug, a cereal bowl, and a George Forman fat catcher).  I also found both of my Nalgene bottles that went missing long ago.

Next, I’d like to go through all of my books, and bring them down to the local bookstore.  They take in donations and they give out credits for their store. I have a lot of books that I’ve either read, aren’t interested in reading, or just don’t need (I have a lot of Chick Lit books, and books I bought for $.25 at flea markets).  Of Harry Potter books, I have THREE copies of the first 5 books.  Hardcover, softcover (a set that came with 1-5), and the British version.  That is very unnecessary.  I really want to get The Host by Stephenie Meyer (I’ve already tried getting it from the library - but there are tons of holds on it).  Luckily, they have used books, so it wouldn’t be a new purchase.

Of course, I also need to do the seasonal cleanse of my wardrobe.  There are tons of clothes that I’m hanging on to because I might wear them some day.  I’d say about 5 sweaters fall into that category, and I just can’t let go of them.  Some stuff is more easily given away than others.

I’m doing pretty well, I’d say.

I would like to try to eat less meat.

I don’t eat red meat all that often.  Hamburgers only, and usually only in the summer when we grill them outside.  I don’t like steak or ribs (ribs are ok) and we don’t eat pork.  But I eat chicken a lot.  This week alone here’s been my dinner the last few nights:

Tuesday - Oven crisped chicken with mashed potatoes and peas
Wednesday - Walnut and pineapple stirfry (with chicken and broccoli) and rice
Thursday - whole grain pasta with zucchini and summer squash and left over chicken that wasn’t used on Wednesday night.
Friday (lunch) - more pasta with chicken and zucchini, squash, and lots of added broccoli

That’s a lot of chicken.  For dinner Friday night, my dad and I went over to Larry’s house.  He doesn’t eat meat (vegetarian for 12 years!), but eats a lot of fish.  He made us a salmon, rice and spinach casserole.  It was pretty simple, but good.  Not too much flavor.  Tonight, we’re having vegetarian lasagna.  My mom asked if I wanted to add sausage to it, and I said no thanks (I used to only eat it if it had sausage).

Because this is a new found thing, and neither my parents nor myself are much of a cook, I’m kind of stuck at what I can possibly eat without meat, and also without having some sort of pasta dish every night.  I really like eggplant parmesan, and I make it sans any kind of pasta.  Megan also introduced me to Quorn, which I found pretty good.  We made Quorn sloppy joe’s, with my recipe from my LID cookbook.  I’d like to eat more salmon, maybe two times a week, and maybe either prepare it different ways, or change up the dishes we have with it.  My dad used to make homemade pizza a lot, but hasn’t in years.  I was never a big fan, but I’d like to try it again. I’ve made a really good chicken pot pie lately, and I plan on making it sometime this week sans chicken.  I figure I can just add more vegetables or some potatoes.  I’m sure it’ll still be just as good.  I’m also interested in making a potato soup.  I’ve had one at Panera, and it was similar to New England Clam Chowder, which I love.  But I would make it without ham.

I know that I can be eating other grains like cous cous or quinoa…. but I don’t have any good recipes.  That’s my biggest problem, I need recipes.  I like seeing pictures of the food so I know what it looks like (that’s how I judge if I think I’ll like it or not - judging a book by its cover? Yes).  I use allrecipes.com, because it has recipes that people have rated, and the people who make it even submit their own photographs of it after they’ve made.

I’m not against eating tofu or other kinds of fake meat (like tofu dogs, or veggie sausages), and I actually found a recipe for a veggie sausage casserole that looks really good.  At Pat and Nora’s Yankee Swap party, she made tofu dog pigs in a blanket for a friend of their’s that is vegan, and they were very good.  I’m not sure what kind of quality food you can make with tofu dogs (or quality food with hot dogs, for that matter - but don’t get me wrong, I love a good steamed hot dog!), but I’ll look into tofu something.

Megan said that I just need to get some vegetarian cookbooks and start looking for recipes that look appealing.  Yesterday I went through all of my old Redbook and Good Housekeeping magazines and tore out anything that was interesting before I recycled them.  All of the recipes that looked good were meat based.  That’s pretty frustrating.  Some were fish, but most were chicken or pork.  And they were weird fish like grouper, or were shrimp (and mom doesn’t like shrimp - but dad does!)

And so I’m asking - Do you have any good vegetarian recipes?

Megan - Could you and Mac start taking pictures of your food and send it to me?  You could do a mini food blog for me!