Who You Calling A Turkey?

Let’s talk about meat. Sweet Roast and I don’t eat a lot of red meat. It’s not as if we don’t like it, it’s just not really our favourite meat. Beef is a good source of Vitamin B6, iron and zinc but your average (translate that to read ‘affordable’) cut of meat also contains an added bonus - fat. And usually enough to make the cut not as healthy as it could have been. We have used a lot of meat substitutes, but when it comes to eating meat, the Sweet Roast and I will pick turkey most every time. Turkey is ultra low-fat, and gives us the iron and zinc we’re missing by not eating beef. Pork is pretty much out of the question for us (mostly for personal reasons) and those same reasons also strike a lot of seafood off our meat list. Mind you, canned tuna is a really good deal – especially when packed in water. Tuna has tons of protein and is a quick fix for something to eat. The down side is that it’s not a very good source of vitamins and minerals. Our meat substitute of choice is something called veggie ground round. It’s a soy product that is high in Vitamins B12, B6, zinc, niacin, thiamine, iron and more. It’s promoted as a good source of protein and when it’s crumbled up and added to meat recipes, looks and has the texture of ground up hamburger. In fact, Sweet Roast makes a deadly sweet vegetarian chili using this meat substitute. She even entered it in a chili contest in a nearby community and won third, second and first place is successive years with the recipe. Tasters often need to be convinced it’s not meat because, as I stated before, it looks and has the texture of ground up hamburger. Come to think of it, I can’t remember the last time she made chili with the real stuff. Tofu, on the other hand, just doesn’t create the same visual the soy product does. When you’re trying to sell a meat substitute to someone who doesn’t know it’s not meat, you want it to at least look like what it’s not in order for the concept to have a chance of getting to the taste buds. And while I’m thinking about it, I wonder what that chili recipe would taste like if it were made with turkey. I think there could be an interesting chili in that combination, and probably something quite healthy. We may need to experiment with that in the test kitchen.