trying new foods...

In my quest to find foods that pack a lot of protein, I've decided to start trying new products.  For example, textured vegetable protein and meatless sausage and chicken entrees.  I tried stuff like this before when I was dieting and quickly abandoned it, because I'd rather have a small portion of the real thing (that never worked) than a larger portion of fake meat that doesn't really taste like meat.  Now that protein is one of my mail goals, I see the value in eating some of these foods. So, I decided to give them a second look.

Today I tried MorningStar Farms Maple Flavored Veggie Sausage Patties.  Each serving has 80 calories, 3g fat, 5g carbs, and 10g protein.  Serving size is one patty.  I also bought the original flavor, which I'll try tomorrow.

It's recommended to bake the patties in the oven for best results, so that's what I did.  I popped it into the toaster oven on a piece of foil and set it to bake at 350 for 11 minutes.  While I was waiting I scrambled one egg with a little 2% milk and got my plate ready.  I didn't cook the egg until the patty was done, because one egg takes only a minute or so to cook.  Finally my patty was ready so I cooked my egg.

In terms of how the sausage looked, it looked just like a regular breakfast sausage patty and is about the same size as most.  I cut it with my fork and it cut easily.  In terms of texture, it's fairly similar to a sausage patty, but it has a slightly different mouth feel. And that't to be expected; there's no meat in it.  It was pretty close, though, because of the textured vegetable protein (TVP).  The outside was crispy and the inside was soft, but not mushy.  Flavor-wise, it was good, although I think the maple flavor seemed a little sweet.  Not bad, though.  I can see why they say to cook the patties in the oven.  I think the frying pan would be fine, but I probably wouldn't use the microwave.  They would be mushy or maybe overcook at the edges.

Overall, I think this is a good product and I would buy it again.  I'm attracted most to the amount of protein I get from just one patty.  If you keep in mind that it's not real meat and you adjust your expectations accordingly, you won't be disappointed.  I think that's true of any product that is meant to replace the real thing.

Here's my plate:  one scrambled egg and one MSF patty.  I wasn't able to finish the egg, but I ate the whole patty and about 3/4 of the egg.