The Vegetarian's Dilema

I live in a house full of men who like their meat and potatoes. They really do. No, they're not awful ogres who want me to cook and clean for them, well, we all want someone to cook and clean for us, right? But they appreciate a nice dinner and if it's meaty and covered in gravy and all, they will do the laundry without even being asked. It's all part of the big plan I have.

But I'm not a meat eater. And people always ask me how we do this, live in our dual identity household. We're a mixed race family and a mixed food identity family!

Really, it's not a big deal. I usually just make two versions of the same thing. Like tonight, we had meat pie. I'm sure that I'm missing some fancy name, but that's what we call it. It's easy to make for all of us.

I boil a pot of diced potatoes--OK, today I dumped my whole tea boiler water in a stock pot because I am never ahead of the ball these days. It takes all of 20 minutes to peel 8 potatoes, and boil them up when you start with almost boiling water. I saute stew meat or ground beef with onions until it's good and burned on so I have a base for gravy, add some of the potato water, add a cornstarch slurry and dump all but one ladle of the potatoes into the pan. Salt, pepper, two grated carrots and one Pioneer Woman pie crust pulled out of the freezer an hour earlier, and there it is.




For the veggie version I use the ladle of potatoes, some carrots, spinach, lentils or "fake" chicken or boca crumbles with a milk slurry. This one leaked a little, but it's still super yum. The prep happens at the same time, they bake together, they come out at the same time. It's easy-pleasey.



And if you're lucky and you happen to pull one of the BIG pie crusts out of the freezer, look what you get with the leftover pie crust. Mmmmmm..... cinnamon braid (butter, cinnamon and sugar, yum!).
A happy dual identity family! And good eatin'!