A Little Help From My Friends

Hard to believe its been so long since my last post.  Summer is a pretty busy time around our house and it can be a really hard time to eat vegetarian with the smell of barbecue drifting through the neighborhood and trips to see family and friends.  Luckily for us, we have lots of fresh, local produce (including our backyard) to keep us interested and thoughtful family and friends to keep us on target.  That being said, I want to thank my folks for providing meals that were healthy and meat free while we were down there visiting last week.

One of the things that my mom did that I really liked was a pasta dish.  She cooked some chicken breast in a cacciatore sauce in the crockpot.  When it came time to serve, she pulled the chicken out and put it on a separate serving plate.  The sauce was then served over spaghetti and people that wanted to put meat on their pasta could add it on.  It gave people a choice about what they ate and allowed me to stay mostly vegetarian without being a sore thumb.  Thanks Mom.

As for the bbq smells, we made some of our own this weekend.  Ali had a friend over for the day which included our evening meal.  Her mom had a chat with her about being polite no matter what we ate.  She promised to declare it as scrumptious even if it was slop so as not to offend.  We decided to go with something we knew would please her 7 year old taste buds, the Applegate organic hot dogs recommended by Ottaviano in a comment on this blog.

I found them in the regular old hot dog section of my local Kroger.  I had not been into that section of the store since we started eating vegetarian and I was pleased to see them there and not secluded in the organic section of the store.  Hopefully some hot dog lovers would decide to give these a try over more traditional hot dogs, which is definitely a good thing.  If you like hot dogs, they are worth the extra money for the peace of mind.

Here is the rundown on the nutrition:

Regular Ball Park Beef Frank: 190 cal (150 from fat), 16 g fat (7 saturated), 7 g protein, 550 mg sodium (23% of your daily value)  Ingredients: BEEF, WATER, CORN SYRUP, CONTAINS 2% OR LESS: SALT, POTASSIUM LACTATE, BEEF STOCK, SODIUM PHOSPHATES, FLAVORINGS, SODIUM DIACETATE, SODIUM ERYTHORBATE, SODIUM NITRITE, EXTRACTIVES OF PAPRIKA.

Applegate Organic Stadium Style Dogs: 110 cal (80 from fat), 8 g fat (3 saturated), 7 g protein, 330 mg sodium (14% of your daily value) Ingredients: Organic Grass-Fed Beef, Water, Contains Less Than 2% Of The Following: Sea Salt, Organic Spices, Organic Garlic Powder, Organic Paprika, Celery Powder, Organic Onion Powder, Lactic Acid Starter Culture (Not From Milk).

Easy to see the difference and the Applegate dogs were delicious.  We had them with some Honey Rosemary Sweet Potatoes and slaw.

Hope this post finds you well.  Now is a great time for local produce.  We had a good harvest of tomatoes, green peppers, cucumbers, and green beans from our garden yesterday.  Its supposed to be 105 degrees on Saturday so hopefully everything will survive the heat.  Go out this weekend and find your own great local produce.

Eat smart people!

Otto