Phillips - Southern girl meets vegetarian boy: down-home classics for vegetarians (and the meat eaters who love them)

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE
SIMPLE SWAP ENTRES

CHAPTER TWO
TWO WAYS ENTRES

CHAPTER THREE
SOUTHERN SIDES WITH A TWIST

CHAPTER FOUR
ALL-INCLUSIVE DESSERTS

INTRODUCTION

IM A SOUTHERN CHEF in love with an ethical vegetarianits pretty complex stuff. In my world, greens are made with pork, beans are flavored with ham hock, and its not Sunday without fried chicken. One of my great joys in life is to share food, and serving my dates classic dishes like braised ribs, chicken pot pies, and bison chili had been one of my courting moves. As a daughter of the SouthLouisville, Kentucky, to be specificmy cooking is deeply rooted in tradition and memories, and the belief that sharing is the best way to express love. It goes without saying, I had my work cut out for me when I fell hard for a vegetarian boy.

At the beginning of my relationship with Darrick, I fretted that our culinary differences would stand in our way as a couple. The life I envisioned with my future husband would include chowing down on foot-long BLTs rooting for the U of L Cardinals and me packing him lunches of leftover meatloaf sandwiches or thermoses filled with potato and bacon soup. I would teach our children to make biscuits and sausage gravy, a Phillips Sunday-morning staple. During Lent wed savor fried fish po boys. I never thought for a minute that I wouldnt keep to these traditions in my own home.

For Darrick, the choice to be a vegetarian was a simple one. He was the sort of child who was distraught when he accidentally killed an insect. He pondered for years how his choice to eat pepperoni affected another living creature. At thirteen years old he finally rebelled and told his shocked parents that he was a vegetarian. Three decades later, he is still as thoughtful and tries to do as little harm as possible to all things in this world. Without exception, all of his former girlfriends shared his conviction about eating meat. He had never even dated a nonvegetarian! You can imagine after our first week of dating how baffled he was watching me prepare a lesson plan on how to cure bacon. For him, being a vegetarian had always spoken to the heart of a person. He never imagined that his wife wouldnt share these beliefs too.

Within weeks of our first date we were scratching our heads trying to figure out how we would bridge our culinary and ethical gap. On a practical level, I wondered about grocery shopping and food placement in the refrigerator. Would we use two sets of pans, one for meat and one vegetarian? Would we make two meals every night? Would our kids eat meat? How would we talk to them about our ethical differences without demonizing each other? As with any food constraint, the easiest approach to take is for everyone to follow the rules of the restrictions. For us that might mean creating a vegetarian household. Try as I did to open my mind and heart, the idea made me mad. I would be like a mechanic who doesnt own a car or a concert pianist with only an electric keyboard. It just didnt seem natural.

Growing up in my Derby City household, my family and I were always in the kitchen cooking, and afterward around a table laughing, telling stories, and congratulating ourselves on a job well done. Would I be losing not just all of the recipes I learned growing up, but also all the memories that surrounded them? For instance, Saturday night had always been hamburger night. When I was six, my dad taught me his tried and true technique of gently forming patties: using a thumb to press the center down, to create a flat burger every time. I couldnt imagine Darrick celebrating our childs first perfect burger patty.

Away from the dinner table, Darrick and I worked like magic. I felt transported back to a time when curiosity and fun played an everyday role in life. We went treasure hunting at flea markets, wrote songs together, took long walks, projected movies in the backyard, and talked. Everything played a role, but it was the talking that stole my heart. Darrick could balance being vulnerable and wise, yet still funny. And he listened to me. Patient, he worked hard to understand the person that I am. Our conversations were the kind that leave you feeling exhilaratingly exposed, like drinking a love potion.

Although being with Darrick felt wonderful, I still worried about the potion wearing off. Truthfully, I thought that after we had some fun, we would settle back into the people we had always been and see that our differences were too great. I thought the gap couldnt be bridged. My short answer would have been that we wouldnt work out.

But if I stopped at short answers, this would have been a tale of a few good dates, instead of the love story it became.

Still, my foray into cooking for Darrick wasnt an auspicious one: we ate a lot of frozen veggie burgers and beans. Gradually, though, I started learning techniques for cooking vegetarian meats. It helped that my mom has always been an adventurous eater and introduced us to some vegetarian cooking. It was always a hoot to see my mom alter traditional southern cooking to be more healthful. The first time my dad ate 100 percent whole wheat biscuits was a sight to see. In the end, though, the new versions of those foods were different but just as delicious, and so I knew that it could be done. I just didnt know how. And then Darrick introduced me to the magic of wheat gluten, and my world shifted. Even with my culinary training, I had had little exposure to creating meat substitutes. I became a tad obsessed and threw myself into making everything from homemade tofu to seitan.

Thankfully the world of meat substitutes has come a long way in recent years and Ive learned what meats to make from scratch, like meatballs, and which to buy, like tempeh (shelling every bean individually is tedious stuff). When acceptable substitutes couldnt be found in stores, I developed recipes for them. It adds an extra step to making a BLT, but let me tell you, when you have a taste of my smoky tempeh bacon youll see that vegetarian food doesnt have to feel second class.