Mmm...Feat...

When I was 11 going on 12, I became a vegetarian. (I still am, in fact, with a short interlude when I ate chicken and turkey in college.) My parents thought this was ok, but my mother, in classic my mother, said: "Do what you want Sherbs, but I'm not cooking a special dinner for you. You'll eat what I make." So I learned to become a non-crazy vegetarian. That is the kind that "real" vegetarians cringe at: I eat things cooked in meat, soups with a meat stock, things that are touching meat, etc. As a kid, my mom basically stuck a veggie burger in the same pan of chicken. And I ate it. And enjoyed it.

Although, when I became a vegetarian, my family was opened up to the world of textured vegetable protein. Now, since my ancestral home is kosher, we could have cheese on taco night! And peperoni pizza! And bacon cheeseburgers! And turkey and cheese sandwiches! (My father always likes to say that he's treifing it up. I always make fun of him for saying that every time.) I then, in my infinite punniness, labeled these delicacies "Feat" from "fake meat." (See what I did--I took the F from fake and the Eat from meat and...oh never mind, it's cute!)

All this talk about TSP brings me to my lunch: (fake) Beef and Broccoli. And although I haven't eaten real beef and broccoli in at least a decade, it was quite tasty. I dredged the feat in corn starch, soy sauce and hot and spicy Szechuan and sauce, browned them, and then sauteed onionsbroccoli (duh) and cooked it all together. Mmmmm...