Weekend of Pleasant Surprises

For Christmas, my uncle gave me a gift certificate to a place called the Turnip Truck. Prior to my current health situation, I enjoyed buying locally produced dairy from the mom and pop grocery down the street. However, they have recently stopped carrying it and I have recently had to give up the 2% milk they provide. I love being pleasantly surprised.

Leighanne recently reconnected with a friend from her old workplace and planned to meet her and her boyfriend for lunch on Sunday after church. Having my unused gift card, I figured we could basically eat lunch for free. I ended up paying for lunch and using the gift card, plus some. Turns out, this place is one big organic grocery store (or a mini whole foods).  They also have a daily buffet of fresh cooked, organic vegetables with lots of vegetarian dishes and organic, free range roasted chicken. Lunch was amazing but I was more impressed with the fact that they had so many types of fresh, organic fruits and vegetables as well as dozens of different vegetarian meal options. It was unlike anything we could find at a Kroger or Harris Tetter and is almost a half hour closer than the nearest Whole Foods. It will now be my Healthy Mecca, so to speak.

After buying quite a few different soy meals, by the time we got home we couldn’t decide on which one to cook for dinner so we tried one of their “turk’y” style holiday dinners. It was basically a meatless, soy/tofu style turkey stuffed with dressing and cranberries, and comes with rosemary gravy. WOW. If eating vegetarian is like this, I don’t think I’ll miss the real thing as long as I have it every now and then! It was delicious. Coupled with some baked sweet potato fries, I was thrilled to know there are some enjoyable vegetarian meals out there.

I mean, I’m a guy and I like guy food. And to be honest, I feel like I lose a little bit of my manhood every time I just say the word “vegetarian.”  Yet, by the time I finished dinner I could have cared less if I lost man-points for this one. It was delicious. I also found quite a bit of other things such as their tomato basil hummus and their organic, free range curry chicken salad.

So far, a lot of this healthy vegetarian stuff has been hit and miss. For instance, we grilled some tof-urky kielbasa sausages this past weekend for dinner and from the first bite I knew I wouldn’t be able to eat much. Just imagine adding pepper to wet, shredded cardboard, then putting it over a flame and allow it to dry. Major fail. However after discussing with my Zen-Vegetarian instructor, my sister, I discovered that you’re not really supposed to eat it like a grilled sausage. It is apparently best to chop it into small pieces and sauté with onions and vegetables with different seasonings. This way, it absorbs more of the other flavors. We'll have to see about that one.

On the bright side, I did discover that I have will power after all. We met some friends for dinner at Urban Flats on Saturday night, which was followed by going to see a favorite band of mine, 18 South, at The Station Inn. (Side note: I was VERY pleasantly surprised to see Dierks Bently, Sam Bush and Sheryl Crow make impromptu performances with them.)  For my appetizer, I ordered the Sesame Tuna Poke which is "flash" seared tuna (mostly raw), diced and served with soy sauce. It was absolutely delicious. For my main course, I ordered the baked chicken WITHOUT the garlic butter sauce for dinner. It came with a roasted bouguet of squash, red onion, and cauliflower and was served on a bed of mashed red potatoes. Surprisingly, I managed to get out of there with taking only a few bites of the potatoes. (If #Winning were still cool to use, I would insert that here) It was a small accomplishment that, to me, is a big step. As my sister did remind me, in my situation I cannot diverge from my path or write off failures as “baby steps.” In my situation I have to make the better decisions and take the bigger steps. This weekend, I felt like Neil Armstrong.