My First Vegetarian Meal: Not the Success One Would Hope For

So as of 12:00AM EST on January 12^th, 2013, I have officially became a vegetarian (Pescetarian). So far, I have been handling it well, and had a nice breakfast and lunch. I went grocery shopping and bought some things so that I can make a meal for dinner tonight. I decided to make Portobello mushroom burgers, but wasn’t really sure how to start.

So I looked around my apartment’s kitchen, a sad sight, I know, and started at Google. I found a recipe that basically explained how to cook the Portobello caps, and went from there on my own.

These are the ingredients that I used for this recipe:

2 Portobello caps

Feta Cheese

A medium onion

Garlic

Chili Paste

Roasted Red Peppers

Olive Oil

Romaine Lettuce (For Side Salad)

This recipe, including my side salad, came to about 200 calories.

I started by grating an onion into some olive oil with some garlic. I cooked and caramelized the onions and garlic until they were golden. If you haven’t read about my onion obsession, you can read about it HERE.

I then combined a little of the chili paste with about an ounce of Feta cheese.

 Once the onions were caramelized, I put the Portobello caps top side down in the pan and cooked them on low heat and covered them and cooked them on each side for four minutes.

After they cooked on both sides, I added the feta-chili mix to the top of the caps and cooked them for about two minutes.

I topped the caps with the onion mix and the roasted red peppers.

I ended up having to eat the meal with a fork and knife, it got messy.

The hardest part about this meal is that I have never cooked a Portobello cap before, so I couldn't tell when they were cooked, and I didn't realize how much of the oil/water the mushrooms were going to soak up and retain.

Another problem with this meal is, as my first knowingly vegetarian meal, I probably should have made something that was a little more familiar taste-wise. I wasn't used to the flavor of a portobello, so I probably should have slowly introduced these new flavors.

It also didn't help that my friends were eating their homemade chinese stir fry across from me.

This meal? Probably not my best, but I'm still very excited to try new things to make this new lifestyle fun and exciting!

Cooking Playlist:

Daniel Kim - Pop Danthology 2012

Evita OBCR - Rainbow High