YT Knoxville,TN Meetup
 

Here are the choices for the Main Entrees

Yummy! I made Hawaiian chicken the other night and it was so AWESOME. Can't wait to see what every one else wants to eat!!

Rachel

YUMMM that does sound GOOD

Oh snap ... what about OTHER?? What GOES in the other? I couldn't think of anything else -- please, someone else list some options here! :D :D LOL

I put "other" because I am a vegan and I will be bringing my own food essentially. Probably a vegan burger or soy hotdog and a tabbouli salad and chips. :D

But Hotdogs can be an "other" too.

Oh you're so smart! I LOVE TABBOULI! That stuff is just wonderful. And I didn't even think of hotdogs.... You know what, KristiC is a vegetarian, so we should just pick the most popular vote and then make some veggie kabobs and Boca Burgers, or whatever you guys like. Samuel takes Boca Burgers to work all the time and loves them.

LadyLavender, do you have any good recipes for vegan BBQ items? What kind of seasonings or sauces could you use for a veggie kabob? I'm always up for trying something new and interesting.

Ok, well I did not want to get into this, because my eating habits, while not complicated for me, are for most people. But I avoid anything with processed sugars and no trans fats for me, I will also avoid anything that is processed or pre-packaged. When I eat grains, I eat them in their wholest form that I can find and that is palatable, including bread.

But basically you can make a marinade using good oils, seasonings, soy sauce, vinegars, etc for the veggie kabobs. You can grill eggplants, summer squash, onions, peppers, tomatoes, with the veggies sliced long-wise and thin, right on the grill with a little olive oil and salt and pepper.

I will use grain sugars like rice or malted barley syrups or maple syrups (the real kind), and unrefined cane sugars. For ketchup, bbq sauce and baked beans (no pork fat) but I use onions, grain mustard, (maybe a green pepper) in the beans to season them up.

There is a very good recipe that I use for bbq tempeh which is more of a sloppy joe consistency.

I have made cole slaw using veganonaise as the base. I can also make a potatoe salad, but no eggs and once again using veganonaise. Or I have a really good black-eyed pea salad recipe too.

If I brought this stuff to the meeting and no one in advance knew it was vegan, no one would be able to tell the difference.

I also can make vegan (no dairy) or refined sugar (using whole wheat or unbleached flour) cakes, brownies, cookies and no one would ever know the difference. Some are even better than the diary kind. Tofu and soy milk replaces most of the diary in a dessert product.

Of course there is always fruit (like watermelon) :D.

Thanks for sharing! You're right about it seeming complicated to those of us who don't fully understand those type of diets, but I do appreciate that point of view when it comes to eating. Its obviously very healthy. When my husband and I first met, he was a vegetarian but my meat eating ways tempted him every time we went out and so I changed him. Later in our relationship, I wanted to try a different approach to losing weight, so I purchased a vegetarian cookbook, did a lot of research and wanted to try it out. At the time I worked at a car dealership and the guys that work there are extremely crude and offered no support at all -- actually they made lots of fun of me, especially on saturdays, which held a long tradition of BBQ's of varying types of meat. Needless to say, that lifestyle change didn't happen.

But now, I do limit my red meat in take, and eat turkey burgers which are sooo much tastier than regular hamburger and you wouldn't even know the difference if someone didn't tell you. I eat steak sparingly.

I appreciate you telling us the different kinds of foods that you eat. It would be so wonderful if you made a dish or two of your vegan recipes for us to try. Maybe you could be in charge of the desserts for that day?

If you wanted to, (you don't have to if you don't want to, I'd be more than willing to do it with proper direction) you could make the marinade for the veggie kabobs using your recipe. Or like I said, you can just give me a list of ingredients to use, and I can try to make it myself!

Oh how excited I am getting! This is going to be so much darn fun! :D :D :D