>>a taste of the vegetarian lifestyle
by
MANDYASHCRAFT
photosDUSTINASHCRAFT
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My name is Mandy, and I am from Corpus Christi TX. My hometown was labeled the “Fattest City in America” by Men’s Fitness magazine, which (as I finished a potato, bacon, egg, cheese, and avocado breakfast taco) I thought was really a shame. Corpus Christi has come a long way, grown beautifully and become more progressive…because we stopped to think about what we were doing with it and how to improve it. How could we make it feel better, look better, and function better in the long run? Your body is your own little city. I physically felt bad eating fatty foods, like I wasn’t getting anywhere; I felt like the magazine was exactly right and for good reason. And just like my hometown changed, I changed myself. I did some research, made educated decisions, and decided not to be a contributor to such an unhealthy statistic. I became vegetarian and it revealed (in a short time, actually) that any little effort you take towards your own health added up to a more positive existence as a whole. A lot of people claim that vegetarians try to “convert” other people to their lifestyle; gives me this image of hippies on bikes riding door to door with pamphlets, saying things like “Do you have a few minutes to talk about vegetables?” But rest assured, I have no such intentions. I don’t even have pamphlets.
E-mail me questions/recipe ideas! mandyashcraft314@gmail.com
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Ingredient of the day: Easter eggs!
So many people dye eggs for Easter and make deviled eggs separately. I decided to combine the two, and dye eggs using food coloring with the same marbling technique as Chinese tea eggs and make deviled eggs with those. This is really an easy way to make something that looks difficult to do. But it’s Easter…go ahead and take it one step further and make the deviled eggs with avocado for a healthy dose of unsaturated fats, potassium, and jealous Easter guests that thought that their deviled eggs would be far superior…
Marbled Easter Eggs with Avocado Deviled Eggs, makes 24 deviled eggs
Red, Yellow, Green, and Blue food coloring
12 large eggs
Water
1 large avocado
1/2 cup mayo
4 tsp mustard
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper
1/4 cup onion, very finely chopped
Paprika
1. Place all eggs in a pot and add enough water to cover them. Place lid on pot. Bring to a boil, allow to boil 1 minute, and then remove from heat but do not remove lid. Allow to sit for 20 minutes, then pour out hot water and add cold water to pot of eggs to cool them down.
2. Take eggs out one by one and using the back of a spoon, shatter the shells without removing any pieces. You have to make sure you hit them hard enough to break the membrane between the egg and shell, so that the food coloring gets through, but not hard enough to destroy the egg. Don’t place them back in water.
3. In four separate bowls, add 15 drops of each color and add 3 eggs to each bowl. Add enough water to just cover the eggs. Stir slightly to make sure the food coloring is evenly distributed. Place the bowls in the fridge for several hours or overnight if possible.
4. Pour out colored water from bowls of eggs. In the sink under warm water, gently remove the shattered egg shells starting from the bottom of the egg.
5. Cut eggs in half and remove the yolks. Place them in a bowl. Add avocado, onion, mayo, mustard, salt and pepper. Mix well with a fork, to make an even consistency. Add a drop or two of green food coloring to keep a bright green color.
6. Place all of filling in a gallon size ziploc bag and cut off the end of one corner. Use it as a pastry bag (or use an actual pastry bag) to pipe filling evenly into each egg half.
7. Sprinkle with paprika.
Photo by Dustin Ashcraft.
Ingredient of the day: Black Tea
For the Chinese New Year I thought it would be fun to make something called Chinese Tea Eggs, which are hardboiled eggs sold commonly as a snack in China. They have a marbled appearance, and have really minimal added flavor. I paired them with an Asian Sesame salad for a pretty entree and a nice conversation starter! This is a simplified recipe; the more classic technique uses loose black tea leaves and takes over 8 hours. The next time you want to take deviled eggs to a party, marble them first. One-up the PTA mom that thought she was special for sprinkling chives on her deviled eggs. She’ll never see you coming..
Chinese Tea Eggs
6 eggs
3/4 cup soy sauce
2 black tea bags
1 teaspoon sugar
2 teaspoons Worcestershire sauce
1 Tbsp. salt
2 Tbsp. Chinese Five Spice powder (you can make your own with cinnamon, fennel seeds, pepper, cloves, and star anise)
1. Place the eggs in a pot and add water until just covering the tops. Bring to a boil. Allow to boil 2 minutes.
2. Remove from heat. Allow to sit in water, covered, for 12 minutes. Remove eggs, but not water, and run eggs under cold water.
3. When eggs are cool, take the back of a metal spoon and hit the egg to crush it without removing the shell. Be sure to break the membrane between the egg and the shell, or you will not have a marbled effect. Do not remove the shell.
4. Add all spices and tea bags to pot of water, and bring again to a boil. Add the crushed eggs to the boiling water.
5. Reduce heat to low, simmer 1 hour.
6. Remove from heat, allow eggs to cool. Peel shells slowly under cool water.
Photo by Dustin Ashcraft
