My Little Carnivore

I mentioned in a previous post that The Youngest, aka The Wild Child, still eats meat. The girls will also indulge on occasion but not like The Wild Child! He is a full on carnivore, that kid. When DH and I went totally veg I decided I wouldn't buy meat at the grocery any more but the kids would be able to make their own choices when we went out. That's working well for the girls but I've noticed The Wild Child getting a little... peaked lately. He was looking pale, developing dark circles under his eyes, and lately he's been cranky. He refuses to eat beans, our main protein source, so I've been worried that he was having some problems with the no meat at home thing. (He'll eat peanut butter sandwiches but not often and he makes his own bagel pizzas with cheese so he is getting some protein, just not enough, I think.) When I had him with me at the grocery the other day I caved and bought him some turkey breast at the deli counter. The clerk handed him a sample and it was like Cookie Monster; little bits of meat were flying everywhere as he shoved it in his mouth. Poor kid; you'd think I was starving him! I bought half a pound and it was gone the first night. (The Middle Child ate a little bit of it, but not much.) So I've changed my mind. I will buy deli meat at the grocery store for my darling boy. I don't want him to be malnourished, for Pete's sake! I bought another 3/4 of a pound yesterday and he was one happy camper while he was eating his sandwich at dinner; he was grinning from ear to ear. (Yes, while chewing; it was quite a sight.)

DH and I are sticking to it so far; we've both been vegetarian since Christmas. I may go flex at some point, or I may go totally vegan at some point, but for now it's working for us. I'm loving the new meals and I'm figuring out my new stand-by, pantry recipes that everyone should have in their repertoire, along with more complicated dishes that require fresh ingredients that (most of) the family loves. The Middle Child and I both comb through the vegetarian cookbooks to find new things to make; she's even turning out to be quite the little cook. It's fun and I am so pleased to report that I don't miss meat at all; there are too many other things to eat!

The Wild Child Still Eats Meat...

Our son can't give up meat. He loves it. He's devastated we don't have it at home anymore, but I've told him he can indulge when we go out to eat. Today he took me up on it and had baby back ribs.

Maybe one day...

Another Step

We took another step in our journey towards vegetarianism today. We were planning to gradually eat the meat we had in our freezer from "BEFORE", but we found we just didn't want it. I finally gave it all away this afternoon and I was happy to do it. We needed the room in the freezer for all of our new goodies- more peirogies, (a family favorite), assorted items from both Amy's and Health is Wealth, frozen fruit and veggies, waffles, and so forth. I also cleared out the chicken broth and a few cans of salmon that escaped my earlier pantry purge. It feels so good to have all of that stuff OUT of our house! :)

The Transition

Things are going well with the Big Switch to a non-meat diet. A little too well, actually- I've gained 5 pounds!! We are enjoying a lot of new yummy food and I have a ton of recipes from various sources that we can't wait to try, but I'm going to have to focus on... healthier fare, shall we say. We ate out last night, for instance, and I ordered a veggie stir fry which SOUNDS healthy. Not so much when it's loaded with fat, however. (I hate it when I can FEEL the fat as I eat; that's when you know it's really too much.) The six large chunks of fried tofu were delicious and that's saying something because I'm not a big tofu fan, but the fat! Oh, the fat! It just kills me. I didn't eat all six pieces, of course, but there was still too much fat on the dish as a whole.

Now I'm all set to research vegetarian weight loss plans. Thank goodness for Amazon! I checked in a bookstore and couldn't find anything but Amazon had a few books for me. I've put the following cookbooks in my cart and will probably order them later today:
20 Minutes to Dinner: Quick, Low-Fat, Low-Calorie Vegetarian Meals
1,001 Low-Fat Vegetarian Recips: Delicious, Easy-to-Make, Healthy Meals for Everyone
Vegetarian Times Low-Fat & Fast: 150 Easy Meatless Recipes

I have to really watch what I eat or I gain so easily and I do NOT want to go back to where I was before I lost weight. :( I feel so much better now and I know I'm healthier. My triglycerides are at normal levels, for instance, and they were super high when I was heavy. I met the criteria for metabolic syndrome big time and was at major risk for heart disease as well and that's all under control now. I like my life; I want to live it and be healthy for a good long time. It's not about looks, it's about my health and quality of life which is so much more important than how I look. Carrying that weight for so many years was a self destructive behavior, the result of putting my needs on a back burner, and I'm not going back to that place anymore. No one asked me to put myself last, mind you, I did that on my own in reaction to the stress in my life when I gained the weight in the first place. Even when the stress lifted a bit it took me over a decade to get my head together again and lose the weight, but after a point my weight stabilized and I didn't continue to gain when I know I easily could have, so that was something!

But now we're making this major change to our way of eating so there's a learning curve for me to master. I'll get it together! :)

Vegetarian Update

Things are going fairly well as to not eating meat. We still have meat in the freezer from before The Change and we are using it up slowly so DH made his regular spaghetti sauce with meat on Thursday. Other than that we've been meat free since just after Thanksgiving. We haven't starved, and in fact, if you remember my theory about being able to eat more? Umm, no. I've gained 4 pounds!!! Yikes! I've got to get that back under control. (Eating 5 pieces of Ghirardelli chocolate yesterday didn't help; I can't blame it on going vegetarian.) (But the peppermint bark is REALLY good and it was only a sample, and the other 4 pieces- they were all just sample sizes too so that totally shouldn't count, right?)

We're staying veg while eating out, too, although that backfired yesterday. The Eldest and I went to an awesome art show and ate at a Mediterranean food restaurant (somewhat spicy) then we all ate Thai food for dinner (very spicy) and that's not such a good idea with a sensitive stomach, I'm afraid. My tummy hurt! We did manage to find tasty vegetarian dishes to eat at both places, though. We had to ask at the Thai restaurant and the waitress was very helpful by giving us some options for items not listed on the menu. The Mediterranean restaurant had a ton of vegetarian options clearly marked as such on the menu, which was GREAT. There are some exclusively vegetarian restaurants in the area and we've checked out a couple of them, too. It's fun to explore new places and new cuisines, although the younger two children aren't so happy about it. There's been a lot of pouting lately! The Youngest, aka The Wild Child, was happy to eat chicken fingers at the Thai restaurant, though. I've told him he can, it's his choice when we go out. Just because we're vegetarian at home doesn't mean he can't eat meat on occasion when we eat somewhere else. The rest of us are sticking with it, though. The Middle Child decided she wasn't going to have chicken anymore when I told her about the fecal soup thing, as in chicken swims in it after slaughter. Which is true! You can research it if you don't believe me. (And that link is only one of many on google, so if you don't believe that source there are many, many, many others.) The manufacturers are allowed to let the chicken absorb water, which makes it heavier which means they can charge more for it, but the water they are absorbing typically has fecal matter in it. Yuck.

So that's how things are going up to this point. I found a link for a Vegetarian Starter Kit which is now in my "Links I Like" section. I haven't gone through all of it yet but I'm planning to. There is a Vegetarian Food Guide Pyramid thingy, only it's not a pyramid, on the site which looks like a good reference. There's still a lot of learning to do and a lot of new things to discover! There are resources everywhere so the information is readily accessible, which makes learning about vegetarian nutrition and recipes a lot of fun.

What Do We Eat Now??

I mentioned our plan to go veg to the moms in The Middle Child's Girl Scout troop at our last meeting. One of the moms responded the way I have in the past when someone told me they were vegetarian- what the heck do you feed your family, and what about protein? Yep, been there, had (have) those questions, and I'm trying to work out the answers myself. One thing I'm doing is combing through vegetarian and vegan cookbooks to find recipes we might enjoy. One author in particular is a favorite, Robin Robertson, and I have four of her cookbooks. We've used recipes of hers in the past and liked them a lot so she's my "go to" at this point. After drifting about menu planning, spending a lot of time doing my Radical Reading instead of looking for what we can eat now, I focused and found some potential recipes in a couple of her cookbooks. The next step is to WRITE THEM DOWN and put the items we don't have on hand on a shopping list so we can actually make said recipes. I can't just write them on any old scrap of paper, either; I've made an official document titled "The Food We Eat". (Actually, to distinguish it from the old "The Food We Eat" list that included meat, it's "The Food We Eat Now That We Are Vegetarian".) I typed it up in sections- what DH makes, what I make, what The Middle Child makes, Take Out, Delivery, and a section with a table I can fill in with new recipes we try and where to find them. (I HATE it when I lose a recipe, and I've done that several times in the past!) It's all very organized and a big help when I sit down to make up my weekly menu plan. I've really had a hard time NOT having that list up to date with vegetarian recipes, but now that I've plugged in the few new recipes we know we like, and I have space to add more recipes as we try them, I feel much better about the situation. This is an overwhelmingly HUGE change in our eating habits and it's easy to let it get away from me so I have to break it down into manageable steps.

Here's how it looks now:

The Food We Eat Now That We Are Vegetarians

DH’s Meals:
~ Lentil Tacos
~ Salads with Protein (egg, tofu, beans, nuts)
~ Veggie and Tempeh Stir fry
~ Veggie Deli Sandwiches
~ Vegetarian Chili (still have to find a recipe)
~ Spaghetti with Marinara Sauce (still have to find a recipe)
~ Black Bean Patties (Apocalypse Chow p. 120) with Rice, Applesauce, and Carrot Salad
~ Veggie Burgers, Waldorf Salad, Fries (that's IF we like the veggie burgers we bought to try)
~ White Bean Cassoulet (Vegan Planet p. 290)
~ Orecchiette with Roasted Broccoli and Walnuts

My Meals:
~ Jamaican Black Bean and Vegetable Soup (Minutemeals Vegetarian page 40)
~ Bean-a-Roni (My own recipe modified from Beef-a-Roni by subbing a can or two of rinsed and drained beans for the beef)
~ Rotini with Tomatoes and White Beans with breadsticks
~ Pasta e Fagioli (New Vegetarian Cuisine p 82) The Middle Child loves this b/c of the mushrooms
~ Mediterranean Bean Ragout (Vegan Planet p. 291)
~ Bagel Egg Sandwiches

Meals We Both Cook:
~ Refried Bean Quesadillas

Meals We Cook Together:
~ Winter Crumble (The Little Book of Vegetarian Recipes p 28) for Earth Day; time consuming
~ Creamy Ziti Vegetable Bake (New Vegetarian Cuisine p 85) DH knife work; I assemble

Meals The Middle Child Cooks:
~ Pasta and bean soup (Minutemeals Vegetarian p 42)

Take Out:
(several local eateries)

Delivery:
Pizza Fusion

New Recipes We’ve Tried and Like

(This is a chart that won't copy here; it has one column titled "Recipe Name" and one column titled "Where to Find It")

New Recipes We Are Trying This Week:
(I actually put this in my menu planner which is handwritten every week and not part of my "What We Eat" list. I USE my "What We Eat" list and cookbooks to help fill out the menu planner.)
~ Potato and Onion Pierogi with Broccoli and Walnuts (Quick Fix Vegetarian page 111)
~ Fusilli and Summer Vegetables with Basil-Cannellini Sauce (Quick Fix Vegetarian page 120)

So this is how I'm figuring out the WHAT about our new way of eating. As for the protein question, that's really not as big a deal as I thought it would be. I'm finding throughout my reading that we are not exactly in any danger of protein deficiencies if we eat a well balanced diet, even if that diet is vegetarian. There's protein in just about everything and we don't need as much as we are led to believe. I like cookbooks that give nutrition info and I tend to choose recipes with a higher protein content, at least for now during our "transition phase", but on the days when we've been totally meatless it's been OK, even if I don't give protein a second thought. (Robin Robertson's cookbooks don't give nutrition information, my ONLY complaint about them, but the recipes use good, wholesome ingredients so I'm not going to worry about it.) That's where things stand for now; we're taking it one step at a time and figuring out things as we go. It's kind of like "sink or swim". We've made the commitment, now we have to live it.

PS: Ohmygoshohmygoshohmygosh, you know the Potato and Onion Pierogi with Broccoli and Walnuts recipe we were going to try from Robin Robertson's Quick Fix Vegetarian cookbook? We just ate it for dinner and all I have to say is YUM! It's on our "keeper" list for sure. Her recipes just do NOT disappoint!

Trails and Travails of a New Semi-Vegetarian; Traditions

We had our turkey for Thanksgiving and enjoyed it tremendously, kind of like a last supper since it's the last meat I plan to buy for some time. After our feast, we had pies for dessert. DH made the Sweet Potato Pie with Hazelnut Struesel from Cooking Light but forgot to pre-bake the shell. (He went off recipe and used a regular pie crust instead of the graham cracker crust called for in the recipe. You have to cook those before you put the filling in.) Luckily my dad picked up two pies from the grocery store to contribute and wound up saving the day; we ate those instead of the homemade pie.

Later on in the evening after it got dark, DH lit a fire in our fire pit on the patio. The plan was to toast marshmallows, make s'mores, and drink hot chocolate. In trying to avoid meat products, I purchased marshmallows from Whole Foods made with gelatin from fish instead of cows. Fish counts as an animal product, but at least there wouldn't be the risk of Mad Cow disease, or something. Whatever, it was a giant FAIL. While the mini-fish marshmallows (as the kids named them) were fine as a topping on the sweet potato casserole, they didn't work quite as well in a s'more. Might I say- BLECH. They were grainy like peeps before toasting, and edible. After toasting, they were grainy, like... something you wouldn't want to eat. Grainy mush; ewww!

Traditions

In spite of the marshmallow failure, we still had fun being together in front of the fire. The little ones especially LOVE a good fire and sat outside long after the rest of us went in. I've been searching for new traditions for our family since so many things have changed in recent years and a post-feast fire might be a good start. Except for my dad and brother, and my brother rarely comes to visit, we don't have any family left closer than 3 hours away. My grandmother, who lived about half an hour away, died in 2008. She was the cornerstone of my family and, until she got too elderly and sick, would orchestrate our holidays. Our traditions revolved around going to her house for the big meals and celebrations, seeing our aunts, uncles, and cousins. The last few years of her life my immediate family would still go to her house but we would cook and take the meal down to her. The aunts, uncles, and cousins tried to visit as they could but usually not on holidays. Now that she's gone I've been set adrift. Last Christmas, my first without her, was so hard; I couldn’t get into the holiday spirit but just went through the motions. I think this year will be better though, and my way to cope will be with finding our new traditions starting with that evening fire. I just wish the smoke wouldn’t make my allergies go crazy! ;)

PS: I found a place on-line that sells vegan marshmallows. I ordered a bunch; I'll write a review once I try them. I have really high hopes; after all, I'm a Girl Scout leader. Gotta have my s'mores!

This Vegetarian Thing...

All right, all right, I know I've been getting all radical on everybody, but when a person is learning so many new things, and many of them are downright scary, it's hard not to be passionate about it. Now we're going veg. OK, I'm saying to myself, now what? We have a couple of meatless meals but we can't eat those everyday. I have a ton of vegetarian/vegan cookbooks, and not all of them are recent purchases, I just never took the time to look through them carefully before with an eye toward eating that way on a daily basis.

Meatless Monday to the rescue! For today, anyway. I found a recipe for Lentil Bolognese that looks like it could work for us with a few modifications so that's what we're having tonight. Last night I pulled a recipe from one of my cookbooks for Rice, Black Beans, and Squash en Papillote which was pretty good. We had Quick Chicken Stir Fry for lunch with some of the meat I'm trying to use up from the freezer. (I'm not going to throw out what we already have, I'm just not buying any more once that's gone except for special occasions.) DH makes lunch so I'm having him make the meat dishes to use up what we have on hand then I make vegetarian meals for dinner to try out new recipes.

I know I could continue to use the Maverick Ranch beef I've been buying (although it is increasingly difficult to find at my local grocery store) since I'm pretty comfortable that they raise their cows in a humane manner, but then there's still the health issue. (There's also no chicken equivalent to the Maverick Ranch beef, at least not that I've been able to find.) People who eat a largely plant based diet LIVE LONGER, HEALTHIER LIVES!!! You just can't refute that.

I'm also kind of excited because I think I'll be able to eat more. I like to eat. I like to eat a lot, which is how I gained the 45 plus pounds I lost a few years ago in the first place. It's a daily struggle to keep that weight off and one of the things I do is measure out any animal protein I eat, keeping it to no more than 5 ounces per day. I won't have to do that anymore! Although I'll still have to exercise some portion control (I also measure out carbs) I don't think I'll have to be quite as strict about it. I mean, when I ate out the other day for The Middle Child's birthday and had the Pasta Pomodoro, I didn't eat it all (it was a HUGE portion) but I did eat a lot more than I would have if there had been meat in it. My weight actually dipped a little the next day, which is totally cool. (I have to weigh daily or I stick my head in the sand and wind up gaining.) I'm going to have to figure out what I can eat now and where I will still need to weigh and measure, but I think I'll be feeling a little fuller on a vegetarian diet. :)

Talking Turkey

I finished reading Eating Animals and wow- it was horrific and eye opening at the same time. So am I a vegetarian now? Well, no, but I am going to give up factory farmed meat. That means I'll be going semi-veg since it's hard to find, let alone afford, conscientiously raised meat on a regular basis. But that's OK, because this jives with another book I read recently called The Blue Zones. That book talks about how the longest lived people on the planet got to be the longest lived people on the planet, and one factor is a largely, but not necessarily exclusively, plant based diet. The Sardinians, for instance, only eat meat on special occasions. That sounds like a workable plan to me so that's what I'm going to aim for.

I've been buying only organic beef for years now, I've always avoided veal like the plague, I would rather die than eat foie gras, and I buy only free range/organic eggs so this is a natural extension of the choices I've been making to date. The beef thing started as a result of reports about mad cow disease but the veal, foie gras, and eggs were always about animal cruelty. (The kids have asked why I only buy brown eggs; I tell them it’s because they are mean to the chickens that make the white eggs. Unfortunately they are also mean to the chickens that make the brown eggs, according to the book.) I also don't eat octopus because I saw a documentary that demonstrated how intelligent they are, just to throw that out there.

I guess I should have gone veg years ago but I never could figure out what the heck to eat and feed my family without that meat based main dish. I'm learning that it's actually not as complicated as I was making it out to be. Get a couple of vegetarian or vegan cookbooks, look through them, pick out a few recipes and go to it. I started quite accidentally along this path with a cookbook called Apocalypse Chow which I purchased because it's a survival manual for eating well in post-hurricane conditions. (I’m big on hurricane preparedness.) We tested out several of the recipes and found we really liked Beat the Blahs Black Bean Patties, so we now have that meal an average of once a week. Then I found Meatless Monday and we expanded our meatless meals to a few more options. Next a friend invited me to a raw foods class, which was a lot of fun, and my eyes were opened to a great way to, um, uncook. That same friend made the switch from a traditional diet to vegan which is very inspiring. (She made the switch after watching Food, Inc, which we have from Netflix but haven't watched yet). Now I’ve read Eating Animals and I can’t stick my head in the sand anymore. Factory farming is cruel and horrible and I can no longer support it with my dollars. When I feel it necessary to eat meat I will pay more for animals that were raised with a minimum of cruelty with a goal of special occasions only.

Now here’s how I’m doing so far. We went out to eat for lunch and I ordered a lentil and bean soup. Turns out it had bacon in it so I gave it to DH. (I did eat some of it before I realized; it was really good too, darn it.) My main course was a Tomato Pasta Pomodoro which was vegetarian as far as I could tell, and was also delicious. We went out to lunch because it’s The Middle Child’s 9th birthday (happy birthday, Sweetheart) and she also requested a special meal for dinner, Delicious Beef and Potatoes. Well, it’s a special occasion so off to Whole Foods we went, where I bought grass fed beef for the recipe. (Screwed up on the food miles thing, though; I realized the sign said “from Australia” after I ordered it. Sigh.) While I was there I also ordered a free-range organic turkey for Thanksgiving and the guy PROMISED me it was humanely raised. So it’s a sputtering start, but a start nonetheless. I have a feeling this is going to be a learning process all around, but I’m up for it!

*On a side note, when I was ordering the turkey I started chatting with the guy at Whole Foods and mentioned we rented Food, Inc. but haven't watched it yet. He's seen it and he said whatever we do, DO NOT WATCH IT BEFORE THANKSGIVING!! ;)