Today I went to the grocery store to get ingredients for the week. I went to Trader Joes and Staff of Life. All I have to say is that being vegetarian is EXPENSIVE! Altogether my bill was $150 for a weeks worth of groceries. However, I can see why this happened and how it doesn't always have to be this way. I basically rushed to put together my meals by compiling recipes that friends had sent me. I printed out the recipes and then bought everything on the list. I didn't spend time shopping sales and I didn't really know how much some of these items cost because I'd never bought them before. I also bought a lot more ingredients than I usually do, most of which were vegetables and nuts. This is not to say that vegetables are expensive, what it really alludes to is that I've been a lazy chef. I basically put my meals together by having a meat, a grain, and a sometimes a vegetable (please don't get mad dad). These meals have a general flavor to them but they rely heavily on the meat to provide excitement. When cooking vegetarian, I've noticed that you use a lot of vegetables and create interesting flavor combinations.
After coming home late with all my ingredients, I quickly tried to put together the Mango Fried Rice dish which I found online at Post Punk Kitchen (a great website for vegetarian recipes and other things). However, this is not a quick prep dish! In fact I found it to be way more complicated than most things I put together--but again, lazy chef.
I also had to do a few substitutions of the beans, which I had forgotten, and other spicy ingredients since I can't really handle spicy food (read more details about changes I did here). Needless to say I'm sure it turned out slightly different from what the authors intended, but overall it was pretty good!
Moo Rating
I give this 3 Moos because although it was tasty and different, it was a lot of work to prepare. Perhaps my standards
will change as I continue to cook vegetarian.
