Vegetarians Do It Better

Veggies. It's a love/hate relationship for most of Americans. Even though it's supposed to make up 60% of our diet and meat only a mere 5%, it's woefully the opposite. Meat and carbs overtake many the American meal, actually pretty much all of the meals a typical American eats. There's meat and bread in every single meal we consume, because we've been groomed to eat that way for so long. Sure, we KNOW that fruits and veggies are good for us and we are supposed to eat 3-5 servings a day, but they rarely make it on the plate. Or when they do, they're usually drenched in butter, cheese, sauce, or processed to hell so none of the original nutrients actually make it to your plate or body.

I can go on and on about my personal belief and anger over the food industry, marketing scare tactics and absolute misinformation about what constitutes a healthy diet, but I don't want to be on my soap box that long.

I'm not one of those people that hates veggies; I really never had a problem clearing my plate when I was growing up. I absolutely love veggies. The colors. The variety. The uniqueness. The artistic structure, inside and out. The only problem was I haven't been getting enough of them in recent years, probably for a very long time. As a typical American getting sucked into the typical American diet, my meat to veg ration was horribly skewed. I knew I needed to start making changes, and I did, very small ones over the course of a number of years.

I switched from white to wheat, from olive to grape oil, packaged/quick food to making my own, bringing my own coffee and lunches for work. Several years ago I stopped eating fast food (except on those ridiculously late, drunken Taco Bell runs when I'm starving and don't care how much processed cheese product I shove into my mouth).

Recently, handsome and I watched a documentary on Netflix that really opened our eyes and thrust us into a completely new lifestyle. It was chance thing that led us to make an easy choice to go vegetarian. I know what you might say about the nature of humans to get all gung-ho and motivated after they see/watch/read something only to fizzle out after a few days because of our inherited short attention spans. But this lifestyle change, while radical to many, was actually one of the easier changes I've made. I don't miss the taste of meat and the last time I had a bite of something with hamburger in it, I didn't care for it.

Handsome pointed out the other day that he feels like he can taste the veggie flavor more than ever before and it's completely true. No longer are our veggies sauteed in ground turkey drippings or slathered in meat sauce. The true veggie flavor comes through in all our dishes and I can't believe we've been missing out on this taste for so long. It just reinforces the fact that I love cooking, now more than ever. It's been fun as hell trying so many new recipes or variations of old recipes. In fact, most of the time I find myself creating my own recipe based on what we have on hand, something I've always wanted to do but never had the confidence.

Even though we are just two people, I feel satisfied that we are doing our small part to reduce our footprint, save forests, conserve water, prevent our own high blood pressure and cholesterol, and lose a little weight along the way. And I am so excited for us to continue this journey together, learning and experimenting with new things along the way.