Now that we’re back from vacation and all of the deliciousness of the holidays is behind us, it’s time to whip ourselves back into shape. How will we do this? By cutting out meat…for a week. Lucky for Brandon, “vegetarian” includes chocolate. Lucky for me, it also includes wine. It’s essentially just grape juice, right?

So, what’d we have?

Tofurkey linguine

Tofurkey Italian sausage linguine with diced tomatoes and steamed arugula. I bought two kinds of faux-meat  sausages and this one had sun-dried tomatoes in it. This meal is something that I make quite often, but with Italian sausage-flavored ground turkey.

I didn’t care for the flavoring or texture of the “meat” but I think it might have been better if I had cut the meat into smaller pieces.

While I’ll continue to make my tomato sauce, it’s not likely that I will be buying the Tofurkey Italian sausage ever again.

Faro Greek salad with tempeh

Faro Greek salad with tempeh. This one is a Megan’s Island original and a favorite of ours, going back and forth between making this with quinoa and faro.

It’s good cold or warm and is great to take for lunches. We can find almost all of the ingredients at Trader Joe’s, but like to hit up the olive bar at QFC for the roasted garlic.

Yum.

Mushroom risotto

Mushroom risotto with meatless Italian sausage. I used the Trader Joe’s store brand sausage for this meal and greatly preferred this one over the Tofurkey. We thinly sliced the sausage (I learned from earlier in the week!) and sauteed it with some garlic and sliced mushrooms and then added the mushroom risotto from Trader Joe’s freezer section.This risotto is a favorite of mine. It’s so fast and so tasty. I usually like to doctor it up and this combination is definitely one I’ll try again. We paired the risotto with a spinach side salad and Brandon made some salad dressing with mango balsamic vinegar.

Sprouted tofu stir fry

Teriyaki tofu stir fry. This is a pretty standard veggie dinner in our household, but this time I used extra-firm sprouted tofu instead of regular tofu. (See the differences here.)

We paired the stir fry with Thai vegetable gyozas from Trader Joe’s. I wasn’t that fond of them and much prefer the chicken gyoza that we normally buy.

We’ll definitely try the sprouted tofu again but will pass on the veggie gyoza.

All in all, veggie week was a great success! We’re ready to incorporate meat back into our meals and will do so in orange dishes next week! (Hear that? Week 3’s theme is orange foods!)

Have a great week!