Dairyland Veg: Soy Chorizo goes on Vacation!

Our philosophy for eating on vacation was this: find ways to make what everyone else is cooking and eating vegetarian, unless it is not worth it, in which case go to dinner or make something different (and perhaps introduce new foods to others in the process).

Here are the results of that philosophy:

When the meat eaters ate this:

Egg Casserole with Bacon

We vegetarians ate this:

Egg Casserole with Soy Chorizo and Tomatoes

We didn't even make this one! Soy chorizo is so easy to use straight from the package that my step mom just made her normal casserole and threw it in.
Tofu can be intimidating, so I made it for this dish where it replaced the chicken:
This pasta salad is one of my all time favorites. The spices are from New Orleans, the sauce is mayo based, and it also boasts green peppers and pineapple. Normally, it has grilled chicken but my Dad (the creator of the salad) just left some without so we could throw the tofu in.

Cajun Pasta Salad with Tofu

Another night, we made tacos. This worked well because everyone puts their own tacos together the way they like them. We had chorizo (vacation is also about using up leftovers) and refried beans. At first, the teen boys (AKA garbage disposals) had no interest in them, until my older brother added cheese and reintroduced them as bean dip. At that point, we learned an important lesson. When on vacation as a vegetarian healthy food eater, be prepared to guard your goodies!

Really, there was plenty to go around, and nothing makes one feel more like a freak than labeling and guarding food, but the truth is that while we may eat things other people enjoy, we don't necessarily eat everything everyone else eats, so it is important to differentiate. If you don't mind eating regular Cheetos, don't eat my all natural ones! Also, sometimes labeling and differentiating protects others from our strange vegan food (i.e. Mr. Mike and the Sour Supreme incident).

The meat eaters enjoyed some fresh fish with pineapple chutney.

Soy chorizo in the pan and refried beans!

However, sometimes it is best to just do your own thing. One night, the gang decided to have a shrimp boil. Here's the ingredients: Fresh shrimp, celery, potatoes, onion, and corn. Neither of us eat shrimp (well one of us (not me) maybe would have eaten one shrimp but they weren't de-veined.) I hate (HATE) celery and Brent highly dislikes corn. Plus, I'm not really against plucking a potato or two out in the end. Its vacation!

That day, we had gone to Joe Patti's, a seafood store and market, for the shrimp. Since I'm not super interested in watching fish be sliced up, I took my five-year-old niece over to order some vegetarian sushi and watch it be made. That became our dinner that night.