Sweet Potato Chips

These were so freaking delicious! omg and silly me I thought they would be healthy because they were made from yams and I made my own "light" seasoning. Turns out anything you fry is not healthy! They were the best chips ever. (aside from Grippo's BBQ of course)

Studded Grilled Cheese

Stuffed Grilled Cheese! Tomato, green onion, feta and sharp cheddar cheese. Makes the best grilled cheese ever.

More (Mostly) Vegetarian Meals

I love vegetables. All kinds but especially in my favorite cayenne, kick-o-man sauce. I like them with noodles, rice or just extra veggies! Egg Rolls. Yummy veggie egg rolls. Easy to make and way too easy to eat! Vegetable soup, now I must confess I put cutup chicken breasts in this but only a little. The colors while it was cooking were so beautiful. The spinach and red onion look perfect together.
It came out so delicious and it made so much that in addition to eating it for two days I filled two big containers of it up and froze it. Homemade spinach, mushroom and tomato pizza with Alfredo sauce. I could eat this every night if I didn't have a dozens of recipes I could live on.

Garlic. It's my favorite spice and additive, whatever. I add it to just about everything. My second favorite spice is cayenne pepper. Third is regular black pepper. Fourth is Rosemary & fifth is Cinnamon.Homemade granola. I make it for my mom all the time and there are dozens maybe even hundreds of different ways to make it. I like to use Honey Bunches of Oats cereal, for this one I used the kind with strawberries. I also use oatmeal, flax seed among lots of other things. It's the best granola you've ever had.Spinach stuffed pasta shells. I prefer them with Alfredo sauce but they're good with regular pasta sauce too. I bought some frozen ones and loved them so I decided to make my own homemade ones which were so much better.
15 Bean and veggie chili. I hate beans of all kinds except the green beans so who knows what possessed me to put a bag of soup beans in my chili all I know is for some crazy reason it was so yummy and delicious it's not the only way I can eat beans! This is before I added all the water and cooked it down.Then you have a traditional salad. Works ever time.

Tortured With Tofu

Never. Ever. Again.

I really tried to make a deliciously seasoned stir fry with tofu as you can see from the picture above. Sadly it was not humanly possible. While the finished product looks edible (below) it was the most disgusting, slimy, inedible food I've ever tried! The texture of it, the taste of the inside ugggh. It's like easting a thick chunk of worm or something equally slimy and gross. No tofu for me on my quest towards vegetarianism. Sorry folks but when it comes to non meat, meat substitutes tofu is NOT the way to go! This was my first taste of true horror since I started to ween myself off meat and thankfully I tried other meat substitutes before tofu or I would have been scared right back into the arms raw cooked flesh!

Yummy Vegetarian Meals & Snacks

Spanakopita.

Ruffly translated means delicious spinach flavored crack! This is SO good words can not express how amazing it tastes. I'm not really big on spinach but this makes me love it. It's easy enough to make just time consuming with the pastry sheets, helps if you can have some one help you with that part. Great to eat hot or cold and easy to freeze and thaw so you can make a big batch and cut it up in pieces so it lasts a few meals. Green bean casserole my favorite holiday dish that I eat year round. I'm afraid I ate most of it before I remembered to take a picture. Easy, quick and delicious.Garlic and Scallion Roasted Potato's.

Another time consuming recipe that takes about 45 minutes prep time and 1 1/2 - 2 hours to cook but I make it so I have two layers of potato's (takes about 3lbs. of small potato's) so it's a really big batch you can eat for days. This is a pic of them before I put them in the oven. They are so good and I can easily just eat a bowl of them for dinner. So can my mom! They are really delicious.I love mushrooms, green peppers, onions, and scallions. Just clean them, cut them, saute them and eat. Good with rice, pasta, or I like to take a soft tortilla and sprinkle cheese on it, add the sauteed veggies and then flip it in half to make a cheese veggies quesadilla! One thing I eat all the time on my no meat days are tomato, green pepper and black olive sandwich's on a good bread with mayo. I love it and it reminds me of subway!

Okay those healthy choice meals are disgusting! So gross! But the veggie burgers are really good as long as I add my own seasonings and I usually make them with onion and mushroom or onion and green peppers. Alfalfa looks gross but it's actually really good with cream cheese, tomato and red onion on a bagel. You'll be surprised how good it tastes if you ever try it. An I haven't tried this kind of tofu yet but I got a recipe from a book I'm going to try tomorrow for a tofu teriyaki stir fry.

So I made my own herbed ricotta as you can see above I went for a spicy rosemarry, unfortunatly I kinda burned it a little in the oven so it wasn't as good as I hoped cause it was a little too firm but it was okay and I think next time if I just lightly bake it and have it with some pasta sauce it'll be even better. So those are some of my vegetariant meals and experiences. I'm really doing it and trying to go vegetarian, it hasn't been as hard as I thought it would be. It's even been kinda fun experimenting and trying new things. I'll keep posting about it as I go along. These are good vegetarian foods though. Let me know if anyone wants a recipe.

The Best Vegetarian Salad Ever!

As part of my plan to go vegetarian I have made a new food schedule for myself where I only eat meat every other day. So on my non-meat days I've been experimenting with vegetarian recipes.

This portabella mushroom salad that I make with a light homemade dressing is so freaking delicious I could eat it every single night! The only pain is pealing the fresh garlic cloves; it take a long time to peal a whole clove. I know that seems like a lot of garlic but when you saute it whole or in halves the garlic taste becomes really light and not at all overpowering. I got the idea for this recipe of off a vegetarian steak salad recipe using portabella mushroom caps and changed it up to fit my tastes. The sauteed cherry tomato's and feta cheese really make this salad to die for.

New Years Resolutions

*Learn To Drive.
I've been a perpetual passenger my whole life. This year I want to change that and get my license so I can finally drive a car... far, far away! *Take More Pictures.
I have hardly picked my camera up this year, just for the sake of taking random pictures. I miss going for walks and taking little adventures look for cool things worth taking pictures of.
*Become a Lacto-Ovo Vegetarian.
This is going to be the hardest thing I've ever had to do. Partly because as I sit here writing this I'm munching on the best meat wontons you could ever dream of. I've been wanting to stop eating meat for about a year. I've decreased my meat intake by a least 10% (not much I know... like I said this is going to be hard!) and been experimenting weekly with vegetarian dishes. The problem is that I love meat and the Idea of giving up Chinese food and my cousins out of this world ham hock green beans is enough to make me cry. So you might wonder why go vegetarian then? Well it started with a book about becoming a vegetarian. It changed my views on meat, yea sure it tastes good but the way they raise and slaughter the animals and the drugs they give them combined with really becoming conscious of the fact I'm putting a previously living animals dead flesh in my body. I honestly don't believe humans were ever meant to eat meat! For those reasons I really am going to give 2011 my best effort to stop eating meat. I'm still going to eat dairy and eggs. An I know eggs could one day be baby chickens but I'm also pro choice and I'm choosing to believe they don't have souls yet! *Sleep Under The Stars.
It's all part of my quest to get more in touch with nature. I want go camping or at least sleep in the back of a truck and fall asleep with nothing between me and the stars!
*Switch to dark liquor.
I'm just sick of vodka and run and all clear liquor. So this one will be easy. Only brandy and whiskey for me from now on. *Sleep on a strangers couch.
I've never been one of those people that can sleep anywhere. I either have to be in my own bed or a place I've been a hundred times before in order to crash there. I want to know what all the fuss is about. *Write more personal letters.
I can't remember the last time I used a stamp! It seems so old fashioned now but I think it's a sweet gesture. *Read at least 72 books in 2011! *Find time to hold up cute and clever signs that make people smile & think. * I want to get a family tattoo.
Something unique to us all but with a similar theme. I also want about 3 other tattoos as well.
*I also want to write more short stories and maybe work on writing a book.
*Get back into putting my art up on deviant ART and start selling my work.
*Watch an entire movie with the commentary on!
*Volunteer somewhere.
*Stop cutting my hair, I'm only going to trim it and then see how much longer I can grow it.