You guys have me cooking with my camera in the kitchen now. Last night I decided to make spaghetti. We are starting to go away from a lot of meat in our diet so I converted my favorite recipe to vegetarian. Sorry it's a little blurry. The veggies are in the pot - onions, garlic, mushrooms and celery all frying up. Adding the "meat" This is a soybean based product. It comes with different seasonings but I just like the plain. Don't really brown it, just mix it in. Add the home canned tomatoes, tomato paste, tomato sauce and seasoning. Set to simmer for a while. The wood boiler doesn't work for slow simmer so this will sit on the electric stove for a while. This is another recipe that tastes better three day old!
Looks good. On a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being best, how do you rate the taste to regular meat sauce? I have tried over and over, but can't seem to get a handle on a meatless diet. Wife and I sometimes fall into that anemic zone on our blood test. Depending on ones level of activity, 15 to 35 % of the daily caloric intake should be protein. That sauce you made should easily make a good meat alternative. We cut back a lot on red meat, do still have limited amount along with increased amounts of fish and fowl, cheese, eggs and whey. No organ meats because of cholesterol.
Because the tomato ratio to the meat alternative is so high, you really don't miss the meat. You can also get the meat alternative in different flavors. I also use this sauce in a veggie lasagna. We did the full vegetarian diet a many years ago but went back to meats. Now we are weaning ourselves off lots of red meat with fresh fish and more vegetarian dishes. I love cheese but you can have too much of a good thing. Soybean alternative products are becoming very tasty but then I worry about the high processing everything goes through. We try to stay away from highly refined foods.
Great topic, Woodwidow. I have found substituting veggies is enough sometimes. Various kinds of mushrooms, spinach, kale, eggplant, etc. in place of the beef.
