January 1, 2011 Jan and I began a vegetarian experiment. Mostly at my insistence, we decided to try a vegetarian lifestyle for one month. The experiment was based on reading a part of a book at while visiting Eli in North Carolina. He had a book about healthy hearts based on a vegetarian diet. I come from a family history that isn't real conducive placing bets on longevity. My parents are the type that are in good health, for the shape they're in. They are both diabetic and have both had bypass surgery. Jan jokes that my family thought we had vegetables on the table as long as the ketchup bottle was open. A recent heart procedure of my brothers had me thinking about my own mortality. After reading the introduction to Eli's book, I made the decision to try a vegetarian diet. I really don't know what the rest of the book was about.....I made a swift decision and made plans to implement the change. Almost two years later, we're still mostly vegetarian. I prefer to think of myself as a Flexitarian.....someone who still enjoys a good steak, a piece of chicken now and then, or a crisp piece of bacon. In other words, I'm not a fanatic about things. We eat vegetarian at home, but we're not going to be crazy about things when we go out to friend's houses for dinner. Jan has remained truer to the vegetarian lifestyle, noting that my actions have ruined her. She finds it hard to place a piece of meat on her supper plate.
One of the things that helped when we made the decision to go vegetarian, was reading that when you look at what you eat, most people have about ten or twelve recipes they use most of the time. That was true with us...we tended to repeat the same things over and over. If you look at those ten or twelve recipes, you will probably find that several of them are already meat free. We had a base to start from and some of our other recipes were easily adapted to be meat free. From our base of recipes we could then do a little branching out. I must admit, I enjoyed the challenge of finding and trying new recipes. Our goal hear is to share some of our recipes we have found and we have found some really excellent recipes....recipes we eagerly share with our meat eating friends. Watch every Thursday for the Recipe of the Week.....hint: that's tomorrow!
