I ate this.

My recent commitment to Weight Watchers lit a new fire under my tuchus to get busy in the kitchen. I can no longer rely on my standby diet of quesadillas and Coke floats, but I've got to have something tasty that won't wipe out all of my points before 9am.

I've dabbled in vegetarianism on and off for several years, and up until a couple of weeks ago, I hadn't eaten meat in over 4 months. During that time, I discovered a product that most vegetarians and vegans use it regularly. It's TVP, a. k. a. Texturized Vegetable Protein, and it's pretty nifty. If you're brave enough to try it (that's right, I'm calling you out), you can find it at your local health food store for about $3 a pound. That one pound will make about 12 cups of meat-like, uh, stuff.


This is 1/2 cup TVP mixed with a scant 1/2 cup of hot water. Yum, huh? Don't get your nose too close. It smells a little bit like fish food.

Today I had a hankering for some taco salad. I didn't have any ground round or turkey even, so decided to make some vegetarian taco "meat." The magical thing about TVP is that it will take on the flavors of the other ingredients that it is mixed with. I started off by sautéing some diced onions in a teaspoon of olive oil.


I added the TVP and a packet of taco seasoning.


I added a little water to the mixture, just like the directions on the packet said to do.


And soon, I had a mixture that looked like this:


I threw some of that on top of a mixed salad with some chopped salmonella fruit tomatoes and a little cheese, and I took a picture of it before I doused it with light ranch dressing and half a jar of salsa.


And it was good.

While not everyone will enjoy a pure TVP "meat" mixture, I bet most everyone could use TVP as a stretcher for ground beef or turkey. It has way fewer calories and fat than the real thing, it doesn't taste like anything except for what you want it to taste like, and it is dirt cheap.