Oh My Veg!

The Vegetarian Gods saw fit to bestow upon this weekend a veritable hailstorm of opportunities for me to stuff my very happy little face.  Naturally, in order to properly honor my new role as blogger it was incumbent upon me to stuff that face valiantly - something for which my taste-buds are still thanking me while my stomach remains content to remind me of its limits.  Dear readers (however many or few you may be): please know that no matter how great this sacrifice may seem it is one that I took on lovingly...and with embarrassing gusto.

Where else to start but that first meal of the day?  In search of a good breakfast joint one weekend morning about a year ago I pulled the name "Marcia's Silver Spoon" out of a round of Google Roulette and dragged an unwitting Derek out to an industrial area near south Tacoma.  If "industrial area" sounds like a place for nuts and bolts and not one's eggs and hash-browns I must admit that at first glance we, too, were not quite sure what we were signing up for.  Marcia's is one of those places that has earned the title of a "hole in the wall" joint. There are roughly 10 tables, limited bar seating and always, always a line if you arrive later than 8am on a weekend.  If you are all about aesthetics come prepared to find beauty not in the decor but in the food.

 Right off the bat one thing that I love about Marcia's is that I have options both as a vegetarian and as a picky eater (and I am notoriously picky about breakfast!).  This particular Saturday, accompanied by two "partners in eating" (aka Mom and Dad), I dug into the Veggie Omelette and Pancakes.  And yes, eating "partners" are required at Marcia's considering that your small hill of an omelette comes accompanied by not one, but two pancakes bigger than your head and your eating partner's head combined.  At the risk of repeating sentiments similar to those expressed against tofu last week I still have to say that the Marcia's Veggie Omelette is all the more impressive for the fact that I hate eggs.  Unlike tofu, however, omelettes are something that I have always wanted to like - having all the best veggie and cheesy goodies stuffed into my very own yellowy, spongy, kryptonite has always seemed vastly unfair and generated severely misplaced jealousy against those who actually like eggs.  All this is no more at Marcia's.  The egg is light, fluffy and moist instead of heavy or greasy as with other omelettes I have tried and the proportions of filling to egg are perfect.  The veggies (bell pepper, onion, green onion, mushrooms, etc) are cooked perfectly so that there is just a little bit of crispness left in them to compliment the softness of the egg.  Also, since I am one who enjoys eating even raw onion (much to the displeasure of anyone who happens to be nearby), I like that the onion is allowed to have a little stronger presence.  Those of you who like your onion more on the cooked side, though, never fear!  Mom, who split the omelette with me, generally prefers this, too, but remarked on how well done she thought the veggie mixture was.

Feed Me!

Inspired by several recent taste bud escapades and an apparent abundance of free time on my hands I have decided to try my hand at a little food blog.  As this is an area in which I have very little expertise (self-proclaimed food snobs feel free to navigate away now) yet very discerning appreciations (read: picky eater) I hope to do one of two things: 1) Describe my own relatively successful forays into cooking, baking and/or drinking; one of these things I am more accomplished at than the others... or, 2) Describe the blissful experience of enjoying someone else's successful forays.  Given a little time and a well-stroked ego I may even write about my own food disasters.

Business first.  You may have deduced, given the name of the blog, that I am a vegetarian.  (Less obvious is my love of irony and sarcasm which I seriously considered showcasing by making my background image that of a giant, juicy burger).  If this seems limiting to the palate I must confess that until the last several months of my three-year vegetarianism I was resigned to the happy little thought that at least my indecisiveness was cured by a lack of options.  Out for a quick bite one night my lovely boyfriend, Derek, suggested a salad in response to the "chicken", "beef" and "shrimp"-heavy menu.  To which I could only respond by asking which chicken or shrimp salad I should pick.  It has taken many Thai and Indian restaurants and quite a few amazing food excursions in Seattle to show me that variety, creativity and beauty are totally a part of vegetarianism.  On a completely different point the emphasis on veggies may also come from the fact that as a picky eater I am averse to many kinds of fruit that apparently make the world go round for most people.  To that end I will be signing off each post with "The Veggie Monster" - a title lovingly given to me by my little sister.

The real point of this first post, of course, is to show off my most recent and absolutely most successful cooking experiment.  And what kind of showing off would it be without a couple photos?  The menu for the evening consisted of Curry-Ginger Honey Glazed Tofu & Peanut Sauce Egg-rolls; Cheddar Cheese & Green Onion Crisps holding an Avocado, Wasabi & Soy-Soaked Red Pepper Dip.  Phew. Quite the mouthful (as you will soon notice a trend: pun totally intended).  As previously mentioned, as this is an area in which I have almost no expertise this meal took me about three hours to prepare.  Although I would like to keep it together with some semblance of modesty, I'm not sure that's entirely possible with this meal since even looking at the photos is causing my mouth to water and my stomach to grumble unabashedly.