Lazy Lazy Hot-as-Hades Quesadillas

I’m not a summer person. Actually, that’s an understatement. Summer is to me as high noon is to Nosferatu. Once the mercury inches above 80°, I turn into a whining, pasty, squinting complainer. We’re in the middle of a heat wave right now, with the heat index above 100°. I want to hide in the dark with a fan on my face. What I don’t want to do is cook. So here’s my concession to the heat. It took about 10 minutes from start to finish and I spiced it up nicely (that’s the kind of heat I like). The “Buffalo wings” I used, especially made this way, are pretty darn indiscernible from the real thing. The pictures aren’t great because,...

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I’ve Got a Pantry Full of Healthy Junk, and I Want Cookies!

Tahini Cookies. This recipe literally came from two jars sitting side-by-side in my pantry: tahini and Nutella. Before I made these cookies, I’d never used either one. The tahini was purchased as part of my initial “pantry-stocking” when I became a vegetarian. The Nutella? I had a coupon and it was free. To the left of these jars, on the same shelf, was a bag of muesli. Voilà! A cookie was born! This cookie doesn’t necessarily require strict adherence to the following recipe. Adding and...

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Julie Hasson: There's a Pig I Didn't Eat, and He Has Your Name All Over Him!

So, the way my mind works (and maybe yours, too) is that contemplating cutting out my main food group caused me to obsess over what I would no longer eat. I didn’t (at first, anyway) think about the whole world of food opening to me, food that I’d not only never tried, but never even heard of. Nope. I thought mainly about one particular food that would be cut out of my life forever if I gave up meat: Italian sausage. This caused me to worry that I couldn’t commit to a vegetarian life. Honestly, this one food could have been my undoing. It wasn’t enough that I no longer had any in the house, so I wouldn’t be tempted. I vividly remember...

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Looking for a 12-Step Program for Cheese Addiction

According to the book Breaking the Food Seduction: The Hidden Reasons Behind Food Cravings by Neal D. Barnard and Joanne Stepaniak, researchers discovered that cow’s milk has traces of morphine. Cow’s milk also has a protein called casein. Casein breaks apart during digestion and releases a whole goody bag of opiates. Casein is in milk, and it is especially concentrated in cheese (51). So, essentially, I guess that makes me a cheese-tweaker. Now, the first Step in “The 12 Steps” states that I must admit I am powerless over my addiction – and that my life has become unmanageable. Hmmmm. So, sometimes I do feel powerless in front of the...

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What the Mouth Doesn’t Know Can’t Hurt It (or- Don’t Let Your Left Hand Know What Your Right Hand is Stuffing into Your Face)

I didn’t stop eating meat because I don’t like it. Granted, if I dwelled on what I was eating when I was still eating meat, I could pretty easily gross myself out. Even so, I’m an umami sort of girl- I would have chosen a pork chop over a slice of apple pie any day of the week. Giving up meat, for me, was a health issue and also a commitment to not support factory farming. So if I was going to survive this transformation, I needed to find foods to bridge the gap from Meatopolis to Vegtopia. I needed to trick my brain until my tastebuds jumped on for the ride. Clearly, I love to cook. But since vegetarian and vegan cooking was new to...

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A Veg 4th of July (or, How I Force-Fed My Dear Friends)

This 4th of July saw a double celebration at our house. In addition to Independence Day, it was also a chance to try out entertaining as a new vegetarian.  I invited some close friends over (far too few for the colossal amount of food I made) and ate ate ate. I used the party as a chance to make some dishes I’d been thinking about trying. I’m so grateful to my friends for trying everything (loving most all of it) and for giving up a prime meat-grilling holiday to come spend it with their veg pal. Olive Tapenade My friend Stephanie was visibly relieved when one of my other guests confessed that he didn’t care...

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