This is what I won for making it out of The Week Without Meat alive. It was delicious. T31’s house steak sauce is really something else.

Photo | Drew Lazor

Yesterday, I broke my weeklong meat fast in dramatic fashion.

First, it behooves me to point out that on my drive to work, this is what I got stuck behind on Bainbridge for about eight blocks:

Photo | Drew Lazor

Follow the white rabbit.

More meat porn after the jump.

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I abstained from meat for a week. Read why here.

The Week Without Meat is over. I am still alive. I even learned a few things. I ate meat for lunch today and I felt like a champion after (pics of what I scarfed are coming tomorrow).

My main revelation, however, has been that I should probably stop eating fatty meat with such unmitigated frequency. My self-prescribed fast solidified what I already knew — I love meat and I’m never going to stop eating it (sorry, Erik!) — but it’s also helped me realize that there are plenty of meals I can occasionally make that are both healthy and easy to pull off.

As I mentioned yesterday, I decided to test out some recipes from Rich Landau and Kate Jacoby’s Horizons: New Vegan Cuisine for dinner last night. I’ve have this tome in my cookbook pile awhile now, but never attempted to make anything out of it because I found it a little intimidating. But after a great meal there on Saturday, I built up the courage to flip through and pick out a few things. While some of their recipes are involved, the two I chose were extremely straightforward and produced some nice results. Learn how to make Seitan Beef, Barley & Ale Soup and Garlic Green Beans with Marcona Almonds & Vegan Tarragon Butter after the jump.

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Photos | Drew Lazor

I’m abstaining from meat for a week. Read why here.

For Day 6’s dinner, I decided to go all the way out — Horizons, y’all. Rich Landau and Kate Jacoby’s much-celebrated vegan eatery, which opened in 2006 near Seventh and South, has definitely been on my The Week Without Meat hit list from the beginning. The second-to-last evening of my veg challenge seemed like the perfect opportunity to splurge a little. I’m glad I did.

The lady and I pulled up seats at the ground-floor bar and got busy. Clockwise from top left — seitan reuben sliders (I’m a Jewish deli addict, so these were killer); grilled seitan with yukon mash, horseradish cream sauce and red pepper tapenade (heartily American in the best possible way); Jacoby’s super-creamy saffron creme brulee with pistachio biscotti; and Catalan tempeh with braised lentils and a smoked eggplant-stuffed pepper. I dug everything we ordered, but I’ll admit that I’m not accustomed to the consistency of tempeh — this was my first time having it, and I was somewhat flummoxed by the inherent textural characteristics of the soybean-based superfood. I’ll give it another shot down the line, but for now I think seitan is my number one not-meat girl.

Tonight, I’ll be trying my hand at two recipes from their 2007 cookbook, Horizons: New Vegan Cuisine, for my Super Bowl dinner — seitan beef, barley and ale soup and garlic green beans with Marcona almonds and tarragon butter*. How badly will I screw this up? Find out tomorrow.

Also: When shopping for ingredients at Whole Foods earlier, I couldn’t resist tossing a packet of uncured bacon into the cart. Will I be frying up a big-ass pile at 12:01 a.m.? Check back manana for the answer.

* The recipe calls for vegan butter, but I think I’m going to rock the real stuff.

I’m abstaining from meat for a week. Read why here.

Yesterday, I mentioned that I planned to spend my Saturday watching a bunch of gruesome PETA videos and reading a bunch of literature to give a fair shake to the personal politics side of the vegan/vegetarian question. But consuming a bunch of tasty meat substitutes in the past 24 hours has put me in a surprisingly good mood, so now I think I’m going to save all that fun for Super Bowl Sunday. Woo.

Photo | Drew Lazor

For dinner yesterday, I dropped by Govinda’s, which I’d never been to despite it being a short walk from my apartment. (Likely explanation for this: They do not have meat.) I explained earlier this week that my objective is not to drastically alter my normal habits for the better — as much as I probably should do that, the realistic plan these past few days has been to eat as normally as possible (sans meat) and document the ensuing mental anguish. As such, I was pleased by Gov’s recognizable grilly options. After shouldering my way through a sea of really skinny UArts kids with crappy band patches sewed on their jackets, I got myself a kofta sub (fake meatballs, real mozz and marinara) and a side of deep-fried fake chicken nuggets. While I found that the one-of-a-kind texture of the kofta balls grew more and more haunting with each bite, that’s more of a “me” than a “them” issue. The nuggets, though? They’re killing it with the nuggets. Slight stringiness notwithstanding, they were crispy, chewy and satisfying. You could definitely trick an absentminded/slightly drunk carnivore with these things.

For lunch earlier today, I ate a few Morningstar Farms veggie sausage patties on a roll. These are also excellent!

I refuse to apologize for loading up on the phony stuff on the second-to-last day of The Week Without Meat. I know that this really isn’t the truest way to experience a beneficial vegetarian diet, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t miss the feeling of biting into something meaty. My girlfriend, the sadistic orchestrator of this entire endeavor, bought me a sack of green beans at the store earlier. I am considering eating them later.

It’s been interesting, but I think I’m ready for it to be over. I’ve felt kinda slow this entire week, and I’ve witnessed the eyes of more than a few coworkers and friends glaze over as I’ve feebly stumbled over words while trying to explain something. Is this purely psychosomatic? Most likely. But it’s still weird and frustrating. Gimme a fat burger and I will speak extemporaneously for 72 hours.

I plan on offering some insightful coherent thoughts on my temporary veg
status come Day 7, but today I just can’t shake my meat fixation. With this in mind, I wanted to ask y’all: Where should I make the girl take me for the steak dinner I’m about to win? Capital Grille was my initial thought, but I want to weigh all my options. Let’s hear it in the comments.

I WANT TO SLEEP IN IT.

random-good-stuff.com

I’m abstaining from meat for a week. Read why here.

Sorry for missing yesterday’s update — it’s been an extremely busy couple of days, but I can confidently say that I am still holding it down.

I’m still thinking about meat a lot, though.

On Wednesday night, I whipped up a recipe for tofu and black bean tacos submitted by Meal Ticket reader Christine. “Try this and I promise it won’t seem like you’re NOT purposely avoiding meat,” she wrote. Despite having to shell out a pretty penny for cumin and ground coriander (didn’t have these spices on hand), I was extremely pleased with the results — the recipe was easy to pull off and quite satisfying, with the hearty texture of the crumbled seasoned tofu and black beans filling me right up. And though the recipe didn’t call for explicitly, I had a blast squeezing the excess water out of the extra-firm protein blocks with my bare hands. (I decided to do this after hearing several home cooks gripe about the inherent sogginess of the stuff.) The move definitely contributed to the overall thumbs-up texture of the meat replacement. Thank you, Christine!

For lunch on Thursday, I hit up Rouge, where talented and kind chef Matt Zagorski asked my girlfriend and I if we wanted to sample a cross-section of items from his new Petite Additions small-plates lunch menu. (Felicia D. wrote about it on Tuesday.) Any other day, I told him, I would be ripping through awesome-sounding items like his mini Rouge burger and roasted half quail with carnivorous gusto — but this week, unfortunately, was not conducive to such indulgence. I opted instead for a sick endive salad and a nice little polenta dish. I think I did a terrible job of explaining to Zagorski that I was also eschewing seafood, though, which made it all the more torturous when he blessed us with a mid-course of tuna tartare and a smoked salmon BLT (sans the bacon). The girl, a pescetarian, was happy to step in and help, making a sizeable dent in both plated proteins while I nibbled on the teeny pumpernickel top of the BLT. Life is so hard.  I also drank two beers.

Dinner last night saw me dropping by El Fuego at 21st and Chestnut and scarfing down a vegetarian quesadilla while I drank some more beers. (It’s coping, OK?) I also had a serving of guacamole, as several TWWM readers have been telling me that hearty fatty stuff like this will help me both stay full and maintain a shiny, lustrous coat. Wait that’s border collies.

Erik Marcus of vegan.com

The other day, I promised a recap of my chat with Erik Marcus of the vegan.com blog, who reached out to me to share some tips and tricks for my temporary veg conversion. Here’s what I learned:

• Marcus’ book, The Ultimate Vegan Guide, helps people make a smooth transition to veganism. One of the biggest concepts he discusses is what he calls “crowding, not cutting” — instead of making yourself miserable by thinking about all the stuff you can no longer eat, why not help yourself move past that by replacing them with foods you’ve never tried? “If you try to go vegetarian or vegan by cutting out the foods you like, you’re hosed,” Marcus said. “Instead, you [should] make it a process of discovering new foods and going out of your way to try new things.” The distinction here with TWWM is that I do, on occasion, hit up meat substitutes in real life, so they’re not entirely foreign and exotic to me. I eat falafel regularly. I sometimes munch on tofu and seitan dishes. (The fake wings at El Camino Real, as one recent commenter pointed out, are bangin’.) I just don’t eat this stuff nearly as much as meat and seafood stuff. I am going to make it a point tonight and over this weekend, however, to branch out and sample some meat substitutes I don’t really mess with all that often. People keep telling me about the kofta sub (fake meatballs) at Govinda’s, and many have also preached the gospel of Quorn to me. Any thoughts, commenters?

• I expressed to Marcus that one of my chief complaints about TWWM is that I often don’t feel very full after eating my vegetarian meals. He felt as though it was a matter of perception. “I don’t hear that as a complaint from people who have been vegan for awhile,” he told me. “As a former meat eater, [I can say that] your perception of ‘full’ changes. Once you internalize that the objective is not to be filled up, [and] stopping short of that is actually better thing for your body, [it will help] change your default mindset.” This definitely makes sense, but I feel as though achieving such an understanding/mindset will be difficult for me, as I’m only doing this for seven days. I did, however, feel pretty satisfied after Wednesday’s tofu taco adventure, so perhaps I just need to eat things with more notable protein content.
• Marcus urged me to take a look beyond just the eating aspect of vegan/vegetarianism and delve into some research on the motivations behind why people eat this way in the first place — controversial issues like the global impact of raising meat, animal cruelty, etc. I admit that have not focused enough on this side of the issue, but I agree that it is worth my while to give these viewpoints a fair shake. Do I think it will change or affect my relationship with meat? Honestly? No. But I am trying my best to keep an open mind. I will be doing some thinking and reading tonight and will return with impressions tomorrow.

I’m abstaining from meat for a week. Read why here.

Last night, I checked out an advance screening of the spook flick The Uninvited. (Check the movies section online tomorrow for my review.) A little less than an hour in, there’s a very inconsequential scene that features stars Elizabeth Banks and Emily Browning in a butcher shop. Banks’ character chats with the butcher while he slices up giant hunks of gorgeously marbled beef with a cleaver. The portion of the scene lasts all of 20 seconds and has nothing to do with the rest of the movie, which deals in all sorts of scary apparitions and hallucinations and ghosts and betrayals and attractive sisters and murders and crawly dead moms.

I couldn’t stop thinking about the steak.

“I wonder how Elizabeth Banks is going to prepare all that,” I began wondering. “Is she gonna season them up and sear them in a pan, then finish them under a broiler? Maybe she’s going to cook them on a charcoal grill? Oh man those steaks look so good. Their family lives on a lake, too, so I bet they could do a really nice surf and turf, with a side of … ”

You know something is wrong with you when find yourself fantasizing about red meat during a fucking horror movie.

Hello, you do not have meat in you.

Photo | Drew Lazor

A few hours before the screening, I ate a sweet and sour vegetarian soup (tofu, egg, veggies, noodles, etc.) from Joe’s down here in Old City. I found it quite tasty but ultimately unsatisfying. I wanted to put pork in it. My coworkers Neal and Holly sat across from me, scarfing down roast duck and shrimp wonton soup with great gusto. It took every fiber of my being to resist the urge to grab their heads and bang them together really hard like Moe does to Larry and Curly.

After I got home, I ate a wedge salad with bleu cheese dressing, some roasted garlic butter mushrooms and a helping of blackened green beans. All were delicious, but I couldn’t help but shake the feeling that I was eating a bunch of side dishes and there was a void where the marquee star of my dinner should be. To cope, I walked to 7-Eleven and bought myself a Choco Taco. I nearly, nearly purchased a bag of pork rinds based on the logic that fried pig skin is not, in actuality, meat. I somehow managed to stop myself.

In my life as a meat eater, I typically skip breakfast. I eat lunch about 70 percent of the time, usually something small and random from a place around my office. (I sometimes skip if I’m really busy.) But for dinner, I always get down with a big, filling meal, with all sorts of accompaniments (yes, often veggies!) and a large portion of meat or seafood as the centerpiece. I realize that this is not the healthiest approach to eating, but shit, it’s what I do.

This is why I’m approaching The Week Without Meat (TWWM) the same way — I’m not going to wake up and fix myself a sustainable veggie frittata every morning, because I would never wake up and make myself a bacon omelette. Most of my energy is going to be spent on either cooking or ordering one huge meal in the evening. That’s why tonight, the plan is for me to attempt some of the awesome vegetarian recipes Meal Ticket readers have been sending in. If you’ve got anything to share, please do not hesitate to hit me up in the comments or at drew.lazor @ citypaper.net.

Other TWWM notes/thoughts:

- A little later today, I’m going to be speaking with Erik Marcus of vegan.com, who has promised to share with me some tips for making it through the rest of the week. Check back on Meal Ticket later for my recap.

- How the hell did I miss that my TWWM experiment is coinciding with NATIONAL MEAT WEEK? God is so, so, so cruel. More on this soon.

Valhalla, I’m coming.

bbqaddicts.com

- I can’t even begin to count how many people have sent me a link to the Bacon Explosion recipe on bbqaddicts.com. On behalf of myself and America, I would just like to say that I hope you all die of massive coronaries.

- “I know this is possibly the last thing you’d want to read while going meatless,” writes Brendan of Sloth Street, “but I wanted to point you to my recap of the Amada whole roast suckling pig dinner.” I appreciate it, man. In fact, I would like to thank you in person. Please e-mail me your home address. And your sleep schedule.

- I recently read a study that linked meat deprivation with thoughts of irrational violence perpetuated against kindly Internet folk. In this same dream, I killed a wild boar with a crude spear and was schooled by a village of rainforest people on the finer points of cooking animals on a spit. I was then married in an elaborate ceremony to the chief’s daughter, whose name was Scrapple.

- ohmygodiwantmeatsobad

- I’ve been thinking. A pork rind — it’s not meat! It’s skin! So that totally doesn’t count! Right? ANSWER ME NOW

But it looks so real …

Photo | Drew Lazor

I’m abstaining from meat for a week. Read why here.

Day 1 was weird.

I blame my abnormal breakfast/lunch intake on superego trepidation. Like a denial-ridden alcoholic coming to grips with his gin-soaked addiction, it took me awhile to full accept that The Week Without Meat (TWWM) was officially upon me. After all, for a burger-chawing dummy like me, the thought of stretching this veg streak out for a fully seven days — through the burnt-flesh carnivale that is Super Bowl Sunday, no less — is sobering. Still, I should probably make it a point to consume more than five peanut butter M&Ms and one green grape in the daylight hours if I am to make it into February alive.

After work yesterday, I made a beeline to Monk’s, where Meal Ticket culinary co-conspirator Felicia D. was working the back bar. After mumbling incoherently for awhile and downing the better part of a Russian River Damnation, I ordered their vegan burger, opting for “Monk’s style” (bleu cheese and leeks, swiftly un-veganizing it), along with a side of frites and another beer, this time Bear Republic’s Racer 5 IPA. Monk’s superserver Charissa informed me that the burger’s inside had a consistency similar to veggie spring roll filling, which I found worrisome. Turned out, though, that it was pretty tasty — crumbly melty cheese notwithstanding, the burger’s crispy outside and silky inside lent it a crab cake-like feel, sans the crab meat. Sans the sweet, delicious crab meat … oh man crab cakes are so good. NO THEY’RE NOT. THEY’RE HORRIBLE. BULGHUR WHEAT IS BETTER.

I ate the entire basket of fries. The little pile of greens on the side, too. Those are vegetables, kids.

Later that night, I wrapped myself up in a blanket on my couch, ate an entire pack of Airheads Xtreme Sour Belts and wept softly.

I have yet to eat lunch today, but I believe that I’m going to pop by Joe’s Peking Duck Original 1984 in a bit for a bowl of their vegetarian noodle soup. Dinner plans are up in the air. Ideas and suggestions are welcome! Comment or e-mail drew.lazor @ citypaper.net.

Other TWWM notes:

- Thanks to everyone who commented on yesterday’s introductory post. A few readers sent in links to some terrific-sounding veggie/vegan recipes, which I will definitely attempt to cook later this week.

- Guardian’s Fraser Lewry attempted a Week Without Meat of his own in May 2008 to coincide with World Vegetarian Week. How’d it turn out? “I’m very sorry to say that I won’t be joining you on a full-time
basis,”  Lewry wrote. “I’m simply not tough enough to make the choices you’ve made and
live your kind of existence, and I haven’t found anything in your world
that promises the rapture I know I’ll get from a perfect veal cutlet or
a simple roast chicken.”

- Yesterday evening, I received a press release detailing Xochitl chef/owner Dionicio Jimenez’s plans to serve an unusual tasting menu of indigenous/archaic Mexican fare to honor legendary prez Benito Juarez. On the menu — grasshopper tacos, breaded veal brains, crayfish tacos, braised wild boar and buttery garlicky frog legs. I want to eat all of those things. Luckily, this isn’t going down until March so I will be able to take advantage.

- Also last night, I got an e-mail from Amy Giuffi of Cochon, one of the premier meat lover’s restaurants in Philly. She wanted to share their latest $35 four-course tasting menu. It consists of:

- Chicken Liver Mousse with cornichons, croutons, whole-grain mustard
- Oyster and house-cured bacon chowder
- Duck with sweet potato puree, sauteed spinach, fig vincotto
- Cheesecake

MUST EAT LIVER OYSTER BACON DUCK NO NO NO DELETE E-MAIL DELETE E-MAIL DELETE E-MAIL SEITAN SEITAN SEITAN

epicurious.com

I mentioned Mark Bittman’s  Food Matters: A Guide to Conscious Eating earlier today in my first post about about The Week Without Meat challenge, pointing out that my almost-entirely-flesh diet is antithetical to the healthful, low-impact approach to eating the Times columnist introduces in his new book.

A little earlier, he sent over these words of encouragement:

From: Mark Bittman
Subject: you’ll be fine
Date: January 26, 2009 4:49:40 PM EST
To:  Drew Lazor

Good luck. See you next week, maybe – mb

Thanks, Mark! I appreciate you being so much more supportive than my old college roommate, who’s also named Drew. He sent along this charming message when he heard about The Week Without Meat challenge: “I can safely say that by Wednesday, you will won’t even be able to see straight and will just be sitting in your office muttering ‘bacon … bacon … pork chop … ‘”

Have a little faith, dude.

Oh, the “next week” engagement Bittman’s referring to: He’s reading at the Free Library next Wednesday, Feb. 4. Be sure to pick up our upcoming issue to read Kelly White’s chat with the author.

OK, now it’s off to Monk’s to make Felicia D. give me a vegan burger.

Last meat for a week. Sigh.

Photo | Drew Lazor

My culinary co-conspirator Felicia D. claims that she’s never seen me consume a vegetable. That’s patently untrue. I often eat bacon cheeseburgers with tomato and onion — sometimes even lettuce — on top.

OK, I’m not the most responsible eater on the planet. With my high-protein, high-fat, shamefully greasy bacon-centric dietary approach, I’m the precise antithesis of the low-impact, light-on-the-meat standard proposed by food writer Mark Bittman in his recent book Food Matters: A Guide to Conscious Eating. And you know what? I don’t really feel that bad about it. Perhaps it’s the pigheaded ugly American flesh chewer in me, but even since I was a chicken bone-gnawing lad, I have loved meat and it has loved me back. As much as I enjoy buying, heavily salting, butter-frying and then eating a bundle of asparagus along with a fatty New York strip, its inclusion in my dinner plans feels less like welcome healthful accompaniment than a shallow attempt to prove to myself that I am not the unhealthiest bastard alive. Know what I mean?

Recently, my girlfriend, a pescetarian, stated that she didn’t think I could go a week without eating meat or seafood. I took her up on her challenge because I am stubborn and stupid — starting today, Jan. 26, through Super Bowl Sunday, Feb., 1, I will adhere to an entirely vegetarian diet. If I succeed, I get a sweet steak dinner at Capital Grille. If I fail … well, nothing has been drawn up as a consequence in that respect just yet, but it will most likely be brutal and humiliating.

Pictured is Sunday night’s dinner, the last meat dish that I ate — garlic lamb from King of Tandoor. There were some leftovers … but I cannot eat them. Cruel.

So what’s going to happen? Will I waste away into The Machinist-like nothingness? Go blind from pork withdrawal and begin lashing out at the people who care about me most? Uncover a newfound love for tempeh? I’m really scared, so I need your help. I’ll be chronicling every suffering (or perhaps triumphant?) moment of The Week Without Meat right here on Meal Ticket. Feel free to share words of encouragement, pure hatred, vegetarian recipes or anything else in the comments section or via e-mail (drew.lazor @ citypaper.net).

Wish me luck!

Disclaimer: I want to state for the record that I do not think I am in any way special or valiant for eschewing meat for seven days. I understand that there are many people out there who do not have enough food — meat or no meat — to sustain themselves on a weekly basis. The Week Without Meat is in no way an attempt to trivialize the great privilege of plentiful food that we Americans so enjoy — it’s simply a curious experiment executed by a curious and generally unapologetic carnivore.