Vegetarian for the week, and a recipe for scalloped potato gratin

Scalloped potato gratin - recipe at the end

Vegetarianism blows. There’s no two ways around it. I know more than my fair share of them, and to me they fall pretty neatly into two camps – sensible vegetarians who, for dietary, religious, or other reasons, don’t eat meat, and fucking crazy vegetarians (all vegans fall in this category), who, for mostly moral reasons, refuse to eat meat and take perverse pleasure in telling you that you’re ruining the world by consuming animal flesh.

The vegan argument: who the fuck is out there eating dogs, cats, and parrots, anyways? And that's not just any pig, it's Babe. A talking pig who herds sheep is in no way representative of the pigs that people eat.

It’s not that eating vegetarian has to be synonymous with eating shit – I enjoy having a salad for a meal, pasta with simple tomato sauce, stir-fried vegetables, breakfast for dinner (sans bacon). But it’s much harder to eat well when an integral part of your diet – protein – sees its options slashed by about 92%. You’re left with tofu and whatever disgusting synthetic meat-imitating garbage it is that Whole Foods sells, even though we both know you just eat grilled cheese and frozen French fries four days a week anyway.

This, incidentally, is what strikes me as most annoying about voluntary vegetarians – claims that they are living healthier or cutting the fat out of their lives are almost entirely false. They eat half-meals at 7 PM so that after going out they can come home at 1 AM and order a whole Papa John’s Cheese Pizza, and let’s throw some cheesy bread in there with that order, and hey while we’re waiting for the pizza why not pop some popcorn and make some mac n’ cheese to pass time?

Meat is an integral part of a balanced diet – though of course, a shocking number of Americans overindulge and ignore the “balanced” part of that statement, opting instead for three griddled patties at Edzo’s or two-dozen wings at Buffalo Wild Wings. So integral, in fact, that I don’t think I could live without meat for an extended period of time.

I first crossed paths with eating vegetarian when my grandfather passed away three years ago – per Buddhist custom, our family was supposed to eat vegetarian for seven weeks, as part of an extensive funeral ritual. At the time, I ate at Lisa’s Café about 10 times a week – two subs a day, five days a week, plus occasional trips to dining halls (but never Sargent because that place smelled like rotting sewage all the time, anyway) like Plex and Allison where they served actual edible food. The idea of eating vegetarian for seven weeks in a row was completely inconceivable, given the dearth of dining options I had and my unwillingness to eat the veggie sub at Lisa’s 49 days in a row (though I had no qualms about eating the chicken caesar sub 3 times a week, a feat I now find incomprehensible and vile).

The thought of eating here now makes me throw up in my mouth a little.

My dad, understanding this, suggested that I eat vegetarian every Friday for seven straight weeks – as a sign that I was, though not following Buddhist custom by the book, still paying my respects to my grandfather.

A food diary of my next seven Fridays would be a reasonable opening chapter if I were trying to write a book about how to ingest as much empty calories in one sitting as humanly possible. There were days when I would eat an egg and cheese bagel for lunch and half a bag of cheddar and sour cream Ruffles for dinner. There was one Friday where I tried one of those Amy’s Bowls that they sell as microwave meals – pesto tortellini – and was horrified by the nuclear green color of the “pesto” seemingly glued on to pasty, doughy balls that were supposedly “tortellini”. There was another Friday where, on a brotherhood trip, I landed at Hooters for dinner – I thought I was having a coronary blockage as I devoured my mountainous plate of grilled cheese AND cheese fries.

Dear Amy, I don't care how organic and healthy your food is, it still tastes like a four year old went poopy in my mouth.

And yet, despite my struggles with vegetarianism, I lived a meatless existence for only seven days – 42 less than the rest of my family, which included my sister who was also in college at the time but had no problem giving up meat.

Every year now, the family stays vegetarian on the day of my grandfather’s passing, October 18. Last year, I ate vegetarian for an entire week¹ , something I plan on doing for at least the next seven years. Combined with my recent cut-back in dining out since I’ve moved into Lakeview² , this week offers me a fantastic opportunity to make my own vegetarian food, to eat reasonably well even without the presence of meat.

Of course, the first recipe I tackled, scalloped potato gratin, is rife with cheese and butter and potatoes. Hey, I’ve still got the whole rest of the week to live a healthy vegetarian lifestyle, right?

Potatoes, pre-baking

Scalloped Potato Gratin (adapted from Tyler Florence’s recipe)

Ingredients:

1 cup heavy cream (they sell half pints at Dominick’s, which is perfect)

1 sprig fresh thyme (okay, my thyme had been in the fridge for three weeks. Don’t judge)

3 garlic cloves, chopped (or 4, if you like garlicky potatoes. I don’t think I’ve ever overdone the garlic in a recipe before)

½ teaspoon nutmeg

Butter, for greasing your casserole dish

2 pounds russet potatoes, peeled and thinly sliced

¾ cup parmesan cheese, or as much cheese as you need to cover your potatoes in cheesy goodness

Salt and Pepper

Finished product!

Directions:

1. Pre-heat your oven to 375 degrees
2. Over medium/ medium-low heat, warm up the heavy cream, nutmeg, garlic, and thyme
3. Butter the casserole dish, and begin gratin assembly as follows:
4. A layer of thinly sliced potatoes, seasoned with salt and pepper, drizzled with a little of the heavy cream mix, and finished with a healthy topping of parmesan cheese.
5. Keep adding layers of potatoes, cream, and cheese until you run out. This recipe made three layers in my casserole dish, but if yours isn't the same size, it will make more or fewer layers. Not a huge deal.
6. Into the oven for 45 minutes! Use this time to make other delicious foodstuffs you plan on consuming with your potato gratin.
7. Remove the potatoes from the oven, and top with one final layer of cheese. Put them back into the oven and broil for about 5 minutes, or until the cheese forms a golden brown crust on top.
8. Eat - but be careful not to burn your tongue and scream obscenities, which I always do when it comes to hot food.

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^{1. Armed with the ability to buy my own groceries, this was a far easier task than eating vegetarian seven Fridays in a row while living in a college dorm. Though I did begin to fantasize about chickens and pigs and steaks and lamb chops near the end of the week, if my totally unreliable memory serves correct.↩}

^{2. Equal parts because I’m too lazy to find new places within walking distance to eat at regularly and because my current unemployed status is making me way more budget conscious than I used to be in college. On the flip side, I have no problem spending an hour every night making dinner if I have to. ↩}