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Coffee & Crumbs

Coffee+Crumbs: My One Night Stand with Meatless Grind

Meatless grind sounds a lot like youth group-sanctioned hanky panky,” my friend and Coffee + Crumbs’ own Jenn Batchelor messaged me after I posted about how I impulse-bought a pound of vegetable protein fake ground beef. The front of the package called it “meatless grind,” and why I ever let a package sporting “meatless grind” into a house full of tweens and teens I’ll never know. Call it a lapse in judgment. Call it a desperate ploy to trick my people into eating their veggies.

Toddlers have a reputation for being picky eaters, but teens are tough, too, because they’re equally picky, you hardly ever see them, and if they don’t like your food they snatch the keys and head to Chick-fil-A without you. On any given evening, you have about two seconds to impress them before they disappear to their rooms to scrounge the bag of chips they have stashed under their bed.

They walk into the kitchen.

“What’s for dinner?”

“Sauteed—” Nope, you’ve lost them.

“Fried—” Better.

“CHEESEBURGER—” Good. Start with “cheeseburger,” even if it’s not. We’re having cheeseburger salad or burger kabobs. “Pizza” will also suffice as a prefix.

This is why I found myself fondling the meatless grind. My son’s love language is beef, and I’m always looking for ways to meat his demand without giving us all the meat sweats. I had high hopes the meatless grind might be a way to cut back. READ MORE