My new “meatless” project in honour of Martha Stewart

A few years ago I wrote a blog that chronicled my attempt to cook my way through Martha Stewart’s Cooking School. Obviously Julie & Julia had a heavy influence on my decision to tackle such a mammoth task. For those of you unfamiliar, Julie Powell wrote a blog about her year-long effort to cook every recipe in Julie Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking. She eventually wrote a book (that I lent to my friend who lost it  – another example of why I don’t lend books to friends) about her experience called Julie & Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously. It was a great debut novel that became the movie Julie & Julia starring Meryl Streep as Julia Child and Amy Adams as Julie Powell.

My experiment was less successful than Powell’s. As a vegetarian I was determined to substitute all the meat recipes in Stewart’s book with tofu or tempeh, but after a couple of months I gave up, the task was too impossible to complete. I remember writing to Martha Stewart imploring her to create a vegetarian cookbook. Well my friends, my wish was granted earlier this month when Stewart released meatless (lowercase “m” intentional); with over 200 vegetarian recipes, the book offers a road map on how to embrace vegetarianism. The dedication reads, “To everyone who realizes that a balanced diet relying more heavily on vegetable than on animal can result in a longer and healthier life.” Amen sister.

So now that my prayers have been answered by Saint Martha Stewart I am going to take another stab at my earlier, abandoned project, only this time I have a better resource that suits my dietary needs. This time I won’t give up, I won’t fail, in fact I will succeed. God willing. In six months I plan on cooking every meatless recipe, and I will photograph and write about my journey on this here blog. Would Martha ever give up? Rhetorical question losers! No she wouldn’t, and neither will I.

So check in from time to time and see how I do. It’s going to be a lot of fun. I think I’ll start tonight!