Veg for a Day? Oh, how the pendulum swings.

Meals as of late have been pure meat-fests. I think it started a few weeks ago when I scored a small pot roast for $0.17. No, not $0.17 per pound, but $0.17 for three pounds. Yup, you read that right. I was thinking of making an end-of-summer slow cooker BBQ pulled-beef, and when I was pawing through the roasts in the grocery store, I found one mislabeled for $0.17. All of the others in the bin were labeled correctly, they all had the same dates (so it’s not like I was buying the solitary week-old roast), but not this one. So instead of just thinking of how good an end-of-summer BBQ would be, I made it happen. And with any good slow-cooker meal, we ate it for days. And that folks, was my downfall, resulting in a couple of meat-filled weeks. (But really, didn’t they just come out with a study that consumption of red meat really isn’t that bad?)

Anyway, here are some recent eats. You’ll find meat in every meal. I’ve got pretty much every farm animal covered…except ironically, chicken (how is that even possible?).

Breakfast

The kids got the majority of the bacon, so I was stuck with a single slice and the sausage. Which was fine, because I love breakfast sausage too. And besides, the bacon was way too crispy for my tastes. It’s a family debate over here in Dubowsky-land – how do you like your bacon? Chewy or crispy? Chewy all the way for me. I want the fat to be dripping off of it. But I am an island of one in my house. Version 1.0 – who is incidentally, really weird with meat – will only eat super crispy bacon. Version 2.0 will eat pretty much anything meat, but prefers crispier bacon to chewy. And the Husband, well, he prefers crispy too. Probably because he knows what’s good for him…given my love of chewy bacon.

Lunch

The standard. I am a creature of habit when it comes to lunches. I’ll have soups and salads too, but for the most part it’s sandwiches all the way. Mainly it’s turkey or ham and cheese, but in the winter I break out the griddle for grilled cheese, and sometimes I’ll even get wild and have tuna (I know, I know, right?). I throwback to peanut butter and jelly pretty regularly too, because who doesn’t like pb&j? Pure comfort food in my eyes.

Dinner

I have this great chili recipe. Really versatile and easy. I say easy, but when the Husband makes it my daughter has fondly dubbed it, ‘Spicy Water.’ Doesn’t that sound amazing (gag)? I’m not sure where he goes wrong with this 4-ingredient recipe, but I digress. When I make it, I brown beef with a generous amount of chopped garlic, and when the beef is brown, I add in a crap-load of chili powder and a jar of Victoria’s marinara. Note the preciseness of the recipe. How much beef, do you ask? It doesn’t matter. 1 lb. 3 lbs. Just brown it up. What size jar of sauce? That doesn’t matter either. If it’s a big jar the chili will be a little juicier (which now that I type that, sounds kind of gross). If it’s a small jar, then more meaty. The garlic? At least a tablespoon (from that glass jar stored in the fridge), which I believe translates to about 6 cloves of garlic. Wait, what? Yup, sounds about right. And as for the chili powder? Close to a quarter of a cup. Wow. Actually writing this out makes me slightly nauseous. But you know what? It is really good. I think the secret is letting the concoction simmer for at least an hour and a half. Stirring not required. When it’s done, you’ll have the most amazing chili. Deep color, deep flavor. And the best part? You can make a lot of it at once, it freezes well, and because of its versatility you can have it for multiple meals in different forms (chili, taco salad, burritos, nachos, over-easy egg on top, etc.).

So I think the big shock in all of this, is really not how much meat I’ve been consuming, but how I went through a meat-filled day without chicken?

Don’t worry though – I’ve got that covered tonight, when I’ll be grilling up some BBQ chicken for the kids…