Our last hurrah!

All week we had been debating what crazy meat feast we should concoct as a last hurrah before the start of our adventure. It has to be a bloody, still-moo-ing steak. Or no - strings and strings of bratwurst. Or better yet, pork tenderloin - oh succulent, juicy piggy thigh. And in the end we went --- vegetarian. Neither of us were really interested in eating any more meat. It just seemed like a chore to hash out some stale rerun recipe we could prepare in our sleep. We were waiting, with baited breath, to charge forth and discover new worlds!

And it really is about discovering new worlds. Growing up my culinary world had the color variation of a dental office, white to off-white to orangey-yellow. The typical weekday dinner consisted of a pre-sliced, shrink-wrapped ham slice, accompanied by pre-mixed macaroni & cheese, set against a slice of pre-buttered, frozen "Texas" toast. Goodness knows my mom tried - she worked full time at a truly terrible job - who wouldn't want just a few moments of rest at the end of the day? But honestly, I did not even know olives existed that weren't inky black packed in a tin pre-stuffed with maraschino cherries until college. My culinary awakening at college is enough for a whole other post. So here I am trying to discover new worlds outside of the northern-European laced, eastern Pennsylvania diet (so remarkably similar to that "Western" diet we keep hearing about in the news that seems to kill people).

Any adventurer needs some type of guide - some contact or pre-arranged fixer from "over there". And I've found a fantastic fixer - Mark Bittman, author of "How to Cook Everything Vegetarian". Literally my 800-page Rosetta Stone, deciphering a new language that includes "parboiling", "deglazing", and "sea vegetable". His recipes include that middle step between step 1 and step 2, the important one that most cookbook authors fail to fully address but somehow means the difference between stinky mush and perfectly seasoned stew. I'm reading the book front to back - it's mind-blowing. He draws on so many different cultures - Japanese, Mexican, Indian, Southeast Asian - there's even a fantastic Borscht recipe. I'm still trying to wrap my head around all the different types of seaweed and misos and rice (there are like 4,000 types of rice!). Oh its gonna be a whirlwind romance.

Tonight we ate bulgur (cracked wheat) mixed with steamed swiss chard, chickpeas, and feta (from the amazing Well blog on NYtimes.com). I calculated this could not have cost us more than $3 per person - and although it involved a few too many pots for my liking, proved to be remarkably simple. The adults ate two helpings each - our 2-yr-old sniffed it and then climbed off her seat. Humph.