bacon is not a vegetable
“So you’re a vegetarian? No problem! People brought five different vegetable dishes!”
For any vegetarians out there: How many times have you heard this bit of reassurance, only to go to the table and be faced with plate after plate of beautifully-grown vegetables that have been transformed into something other than a vegetable dish?
Green beans and onions cooked with chicken stock and sprinkled with bacon?
Spinach with…bacon?
Mashed potatoes with…bacon?
Brussels sprouts with…bacon?
Fortunately I’m not the strictest of vegetarians. If the only options are veggies with bits of meat incorporated into the dish, I’ll try to leave the meaty bits on the plate or eat around them. But there are plenty of folks I know who would decline the offerings.
We veg-heads are used to bringing our own dishes to these gatherings. We also try to help out in the kitchen and tactfully try to make gentle suggestions for substitutions. But at a time of year when people focus on traditions, this is a delicate issue that risks fracturing a family into upstarts and traditionalists.
There’s one easy suggestion that might please almost everyone at the table: Instead of putting bacon in every dish, why not fill a condiment dish with crunchy bacon bits that people could heap on top of their veggies? The vegetarians would avoid it, leaving even more for everyone else! Also, you could offer a flavorful sauce on the side that could keep the bacon fans happy.
And of course, trying new preparations could come up with new family traditions. This Thanksgiving probably the most unusual dish was something Olinda next door shared with us: a sweet and aromatic preparation of sweet potatoes and guavas. The plate looked similar to traditional yams, but everything was heady with the aromas of fresh-baked guavas, something that reminded me of the perfume of flowers.
Olinda ran a Mexican restaurant until her recent retirement. Although sweet potatoes and guavas is a traditional celebratory dish in Mexico, it unfortunately wasn’t one that ever showed up on the menu of her restaurant. And I doubt that you’d ever see it offered at any mainstream Mexican eatery.
I’m working on Olinda to get her to divulge her recipe, but until I’m successful here’s a link to a recipe in the Texas Monthly that looks very similar. Yes, it looks like a lot of sugar. This is a sweet dish, but I’m sure you could adjust the sugar to your liking. But whatever you do, don’t scrimp on the guavas!
(If you don’t have access to fresh guavas, there are a number of recipes on the web that use the somewhat easier to find guava jam.)
December 03 2008 05:35 am | Categories: rambles | Tags: bacon • Camotitos Potosinos • food • guavas • recipes • sweet potatoes • vegetables • vegetarians
Greg on 06 Dec 2008 at 1:52 pm #
That sounds yummy…(the sweet potatoes and guava, not the bacon dishes…altho…). A belated happy Thanksgiving to you, my friend. You are on my list of new connections and friendships I am thankful for this year!
lostlandscape on 06 Dec 2008 at 4:48 pm #
Absolutely the same thoughts here, Greg. It’s a joy and an honor to share the blogging aether with you!