Some Things I've Been Eating

I feel like I'm actually eating better than I have in years -- and I don't mean more healthily (which may be true, though I ate pretty healthily as a non-vegan vegetarian); I mean more tastily.

Tonight I had Gardein Chick'n Filets. Gardein is a new line of products created with the help of Tal Ronnen, author of the cookbook that helped start me on this path. (The fact that the book is a bestseller can't help but be a huge boost to the company.) I thought the Tuscan Breasts were only pretty good in texture, but the Chick'n Filets are fantastic -- almost as good as the amazing-but-troublesome Quorn "chicken" that tastes like the real thing but that I'll never eat again in my life.

About ten or so years ago, my ex and I discovered Quorn and were completely taken with it. It tasted and felt exactly -- but exactly -- like chicken breast meat. Then one night after eating it, he got violently ill (and I mean vomiting-out-the-car-window ill). It turns out that a documented small percentage of people have that reaction to the fungus-related mycoprotein that Quorn is made from, and he apparently was one of them. At the time, the FDA hadn't actually approved Quorn; it was in the "generally considered safe" category -- that word "generally" kind of gives one pause, no? I haven't checked back to see if that status has changed. All I know is that my ex immediately stopped eating Quorn for good, and I did too; even though I didn't have a negative reaction, I couldn't comfortably eat something that affected other people so frighteningly. (In any case, Quorn also contains egg.)

Gardein products, on the other hand, are made from grains and other familiar ingredients. I don't know what they do to get the texture they achieve, but the ones I've tried are "generally" (ha ha) excellent. In addition to the Chick'n Filets, I love the beefy BBQ Skewers. The first time I had them, I browned them in olive oil on the skewers they come with, then removed them and cut the "meat" into chunks and added it to a sautee of mushrooms and grape tomatoes, splashing the whole thing at the last minute with a glug or two of balsamic vinegar, which caramelized really nicely. I served it with orzo and broccolini (squeezed with a little lemon).

Tonight I dredged the Chick'n Filets in flour, browned them in olive oil while some sliced mushrooms cooked off to the side in the same pan, then dowsed it all with white wine, making a really lovely sauce; again I had orzo as well as a small baby-arugula salad with dried cranberries and a lemon-mustard dressing (lately I prefer lemon juice to vinegar in salad dressing). This used to be my favorite way to cook boneless chicken breasts and thin pork chops way back when I ate meat.

It's so strange -- I almost never actively miss eating meat, and I don't feel compelled to recreate the sensation of it in my mouth at every meal. By the same token, I'm not going to say that the taste of meat revolts me. I always enjoyed it when I ate it. It's the abjectly cruel and horrifically disease-ridden conditions in which most of the world's meat (yes, most) is produced that made me stop eating it -- and now have made me stop eating eggs, dairy, and other animal products.

I'm not sure why these meat doppelgangers I've recently discovered have made me so happy. I guess I've been conditioned from a young age to respond to their taste and "mouth feel." If people never ate meat to begin with, we'd probably never need to reproduce that particular sensory experience.

What's most remarkable to me is that it's possible to get that sensation with a clear conscience.