I can’t believe it’s not meat! by Elsie Gilmore

A few years ago, I wrote a blog entry about the religiously zealot ways of vegans.  After visiting a vegetarian website, I poked fun at a page of recipes to make faux meat.  Faux meat?  Why would I eat faux anything?  I want my food to taste like what it is!  So, it is with great surprise that I tell you that vegetarian “meat” can taste pretty damn good!

I first made this delicious discovery at a brunch that was thrown by a vegan friend.  She made a casserole that looked intriguingly like eggs and sausage.  However, it turned out to be cauliflower and faux sausage.  While eating it, I wondered whether she hadn’t secretly thrown REAL sausage in the mix.  What I was eating tasted uncompromisingly like real meat sausage.

Some time passed, and I was in the grocery store, and I decided to search out this sausage impostor.  I was able to find it at Publix in the frozen food section.  The brand is Morning Star Farms, and I had to look at the package a long time  before seeing the words “veggie.”  You see, the photo on the package looks like meat sausage.

I decided to eat two of these “sausage” patties last night for dinner, along with some all natural spicy sweet potato fries that also came from the frozen section of Publix.  I put a little butter in my frying pan (as it is not non-stick) and put the patties in to fry.  I came back a few minutes later, and they were sizzling.  I flipped them over, and they looked EXACTLY like a browned sausage patty.  AND they smelled exactly like a frying sausage patty.  It was kind of unbelievable.

Once they were browned to my satisfaction, I plopped them on my plate, broke off a piece and ate it.  Seriously, if I didn’t know any better, I would think these weren’t veggie sausage at all but real meat sausage patties.  I am not even exaggerating!  These things are delicious!  In fact, I don’t think anyone would even know they weren’t eating meat unless you told them.

Not only that, but they have 76% less fat than pork sausage patties, only 80 calories each and are a good source of protein (10g each!).  They also are high in potassium and thiamin.  I wouldn’t eat 10 of them in a day because they have 260mg of sodium, but that’s not an enormous amount compared to the benefits over eating meat sausage.

I give these “sausage” patties an enthusiastic THUMBS UP!  Morning Star also offers faux chicken, ribs and burgers.  All the faux meat you could want!

Elsie Gilmore

Elsie Gilmore is owner of True Green Studios, a boutique web design and green consulting company. Her passion for the environment is evident in her GreenSarasota.com blog, which she updates regularly with practical, upbeat green tips and environmental information. Most of all, Elsie strives to walk the walk, not just talk the talk.