Monday, January 18, 2010

The Tofurkey Experiment

I'm a meat-eater. There, I said it. A better way to phrase it is to say I am an ethical meat-eater. My husband and I only buy meat that is organic, free-range, grass fed, and we try for local when possible. If we're in the store and can't find meat that fits our standards, we don't buy meat. We, instead, buy meat substitutes. We've tried a lot of them. Some are great, some not so much but that's to be expected I guess.

We had some friends over for tofurkey dinner last night, one of which was a vegetarian and has been for something like 17 years. The make-up of the group was three who eat a little meat, one vegetarian, and one meat-lover to the core. Our vegetarian friend had yet to try this soy-based tofu substitute for a turkey dinner which made it that much better. We had pizza on standby should the tofurkey not turn out to be a winner.

I did my research and found a recipe for tofurkey that was in the slow cooker. I love my slow cooker because it means I drop the food in, turn it on, and walk away. Easy breezy cooking. To be frank, I would have bet money that upon opening the package our faux turkey dinner would have been molded into a turkey look-a-like. It wasn't. It wasn't even close. It was a ball that rolled around in the crock pot and wouldn't stay still.

Somewhat disappointed in my meatless turkey shape, I started to think that maybe the pizza back-up was the way to go. After two hours simmering away in the slow cooker, dinner was served. My dinner party of five friends dug in and to everyone's surprise kept on eating.

Our tofurkey, biscuits, and mushroom gravy were a success. I won't say it was a hit because I'm not certain I will keep faux turkey in the weekly line up but it is certainly something to consider at Thanksgiving. No bones, no skin, no gross mess to clean up. Those things are enough for me to convert from real to fake on occasion.

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