fishy fishy fishy

hmmm. i just realized something. i've been barking about being a fake vegetarian for lent, and i have been eating an ish load of fish. hmmm.

well if we go by phoebe from friends' thoughts on being a vegetarian: "nothing with a face", then i am pretty sure i am breaking the rules, as fishes (i know that is improper use of the plural form of fish but i don't care) do indeed have faces. i am sure that other legit vegetarians will agree that i am breaking the rules.

why didn't anyone call me out on this????

so on fridays, catholics are supposed to give up meat (but "they" say that fish is okay). i guess that's why in my head, i was thinking vegetarian because i was going by the "catholic" rules of giving up meat. that's why all of a sudden, you see all the fast food people plugging their fish sandwich options and even adding it to their .99 or dollar, whatever, menus..."for a limited time only" aka until april 11th when lent ends.

but really, this whole me calling myself a vegetarian was my bad. all i should've said was "i gave up meat" and not "i am a short term vegetarian" due to my increased intake of seafood.

while we are on the topic, i went to negril in the west village this past weekend for dinner. everyone else was chowing down on mango bbq baby back ribs ("smothered in tropical fruit sauce, served with homemade corn bread"), brown stew chicken, and bacon wrapped jerk pork ("medium spiced, pan-seared tenderloin wrapped in bacon strips served with maple whipped sweet potatoes"), i enjoyed the left over corn bread from the ribs, and the ackee & saltfish ("jamaica’s national dish served with boiled banana, yam, dumpling and sweet plantains"). i have to say that i normally don't go out of my way to eat seafood, but this lenten season has forced me to broaden my horizons. i would've definitely not have ordered the ackee & saltfish on a normal day (being that something like mango ribs and bacon wrapped pork is on the menu), but it was actually very tasty and i didn't feel so bad after all for missing out on the other stuff.

but i think i will be making a trip back to negril after lent, because who could really pass up mango ribs and bacon wrapped pork? a person who gave up meat (NOT a short term "vegetarian") for lent.

what did i expect???

i had dinner with my fellow foodie (and friend) allie last thursday. besides wanting to catch up and listen to her college stories to vicariously live through her, i particularly like going out to dinner with her because she is always up for eating any type of food. initially we planned on going for indian, which is very vegetarian friendly. but at the last minute, i changed my mind and decided that i wanted to go to a vegetarian specific restaurant.

not knowing many vegetarians to suggest a restaurant, i consulted the time out new york 2009 eating and drinking guide that james got me. broken down by neighborhood and food genre, i came across blossom in the vegetarian/organic restaurant section. besides the fact that it won the best vegetarian restaurant award last year at the eat out awards, i guess what really sold me was time out new york saying, "the mock meats actually taste pretty good". it's no big secret that i am dying not eating meat during lent, so i thought this was a good place to take the edge off.

we ordered these crostini bread things as an appetizer, which came with 3 different types of toppings: hummus, tomatoes and onions (a bruchetta basically), and some green thing that could have been either really fine spinach, or pesto. whatever the case may be, it was very good, so no complaints on the unknown.

allie ordered the sweet potato gnocchi, that came with a very light creamy sauce (again, no idea what the sauce was but it didn't matter because it was good), and broccoli rabe.

i got the soy bacon cheeseburger. i guess because i had such high hopes for the faux-meat tasting like real meat, i was a little disappointed. but helloooo? what did i expect? it's not real meat!

the funny thing is, after i looked back at the time out new york review, the last sentence of the review said, "carnivores may feel compelled to eat the real thing elsewhere, but vegetarians have indeed found a great new date place".

i couldn't agree more. i guess because i am not a die hard vegetarian (or maybe i should say a real one), i wasn't so convinced on the faux-meat ordeal. however, everything else was really great (including the restaurant space and the super nice waitstaff) so yes, i could see how this place was voted best vegetarian restaurant last year. but for now, i'll just wait out the 27 more days to eat the real thing, instead of trying to take the edge off with the fake stuff.

meat eating vegetarian

i foresee that the next couple of posts will be about my short term adventures in vegetarianism. yes, its day 14 of my non-meat eating quest as part of my fasting sacrifice for lent.

so people count the traditional 40 days of lent in different ways, but for catholics such as myself, lent starts on ash wednesday, ends on holy saturday (the day before easter sunday), and you don't count the sundays in between. those sundays could be the potential loop hole, the break from the fast if you will, but hey, this ish is supposed to be hard, and so what good would using the loop hole be?

this is my 5th year doing the vegetarian thing for lent, and this year it seems particularly hard. i guess the rude awakening came this past weekend during my 2nd trip to florida for vaca in less than two months (como se dice florida junkie?). we went to port st. lucie first, to catch a mets spring training game. i am sure everyone is aware of the baseball game eating pastime, and here are just some of the foods i missed out on due to this fast:

• hot dogs (obv!)
• premio italian sausages (a mets signature item)
• chicken fingers (could've ate the french fries that comes with, but it just wouldn't be the same)
• because they were playing team italy, there was a vendor selling a plethora of italian meat sandwiches. (i wouldn't have gotten it anyway, because that's weird to eat italian sandwiches from florida, but it's just the principle of not being able to)
• pulled pork sandwich (that's a first that i've seen at a baseball stadium)
• beef taco in a mets helmet (i don't want to say i shed a tear about that one, but i did)

on to disney...the thing about disney is that i was just there in january, eating the same food (and actually the same restaurants because we loved it so much), so i actually DID know what i was missing. the veggie eating experience was two fold. when we were at the parks for lunch, it was all fast food type stuff, so my selection was limited. but we did eat at "real" restaurants for dinner, so there was actually vegetarian friendly, and quite delicious (highlights include life changing smokey portabella soup, potato chive pot stickers, and a nice cod dish).

i think the biggest hit that i took while in disney was when we went to the character breakfast at the polynesian. the restaurant was called ohana.."ohana means family". it was an "all you care to eat" (as opposed to the all you can eat, which i think was a plug to mitigate gluttony), where the food (scrambled eggs, biscuits, breakfast potatoes, sausage, bacon, and mickey waffles) was brought out to you on a huge skillet. james and i had went there on our january visit, so i knew what to expect. aka i knew to expect that i would not be having bacon or sausage, but rather an abundance of scrambled eggs, breakfast potatoes, and mickey waffles. in hindsight it doesn't seem that bad, but everyone knows breakfast is not complete without the meat! i think i just accidentally started an engineering a connoisseur slogan...

the obession with overseas yogurt

did anyone notice that all of a sudden everyone became obsessed with yogurt from other countries?

it really started with a greek yogurt specific obsession. i first heard about it from my sister, who i think is a pretty good role model for healthy eating. she's not an over the top fanatic, maintains a healthy body weight and exercises regularly, and eats organic when possible. to me, she is a pretty reliable source for me personally. except the time when she and i were trying to get in shape and lose weight for her wedding, and i found myself eating myoplex protein bars around the clock. gross, i could never eat one of those ever again and can still taste the chocolate peanut butter bars in my mouth.

there is a huge joke with my sister eating greek yogurt, specifically fage (pronounced fah yee, even though i still continue to fah gee) . during her pregnancy, she didn't want to eat ice cream with pickles, white castle hamburgers (like my own mom did during her pregnancy with me, which might explain something about my eating habits), or really any outlandish cravings. all she wanted was this greek yogurt fage.

pregnant sister + fage =

8 lbs. 14 oz. and 20 1/2 inches long baby (and the obsession of my life, my niece isabel)

okay, okay. this wasn't just a plug do say how freaking AWESOME my niece is (who is now 6 months old)- but to just prove a point of what eating an excessive amount of greek yogurt can do.

back to the point of this blog....

so fage can be somewhat considered the pioneer of the greek yogurt phase, but then all of these other alleged greek yogurts came out of the woodwork, like oikos, chobani, and greek gods. they all claim to be "the original greek yogurt"- but who is to decide that, really?

now it doesn't end there. so i started to notice that all these other random countries started jumping on the international yogurt bandwagon: neilson (somewhere in great britain), wallaby (australia), yeo valley (russia), and i've seen swiss, german, and sweedish.

i remember when yogurt selection was simple. then they went sugar free. then they went low carb. then they went organic. then they added "helps regulate your system". then they added probiotics. then they added foreign countries.

i don't know who is this alleged "they" i speak of, but whoever it is, it sure made this pretty simple food pretty complicated.