My boyfriend and I ate at a vegan restaurant for dinner last night. Neither of us is vegan, but tempeh and dairy-free ranch dressing sounded tantalizingly weird. Anyway, it was his idea.
…But only because I’ve been trying to eat less meat (says she who was carrying on about fried chicken not 24 hours ago)! My family is game – even my brother, kind of. He’s awfully environmentally-minded, so with a quick reminder about greenhouse-gases-as-direct-result-of-beef-production he was more or less on-board. As a common sense bonus: it’s much cheaper eating less meat, especially when your mom refuses to eat anything that didn’t spend its short life running around in green pastures while grazing, rooting, scratching, etc. Let’s just say that Whole Foods isn’t selling its happy cows for $2.99 a pound.
Like most of my enthusiastically committed-to great ideas, I’m not sure how long this will last. I can’t realistically imagine taking meat out of rotation entirely, since I’m having a hard time coming up with ideas for even two weeks. I can just see my sister (the only actual vegetarian in the family) rolling her eyes. But then, she isn’t cooking for our brother. Also, my vegetarian meals tend to rely heavily on cheese, eggs, and restaurants. Since the goals, if you will, of this exercise are to (1) Save the Planet, natch, (2) spend less, and (3) be healthier, it makes no sense to go buy a brick of cheddar, which, while tasty, is neither cheap nor particularly good for you. This is not to say we can’t eat some cheese and some eggs – there are a lot of exceptions and gray areas in this plan – but I’m trying to avoid having them take center stage at every meal.
This is what I’ve come up with:
Week 1
Sunday: Homemade pizzas, salad
Monday: Black bean and squash chili over sweet potatoes
Tuesday: Corn chowder, salad
Wednesday: Linguini, marinara sauce, salad (you guessed it!)
Thursday: Fried chicken (but it’s the LAST CONCERT)
Week 2
Sunday: Fish, maybe? I’m ok with some cheating.
Monday: Baked penne with tomatoes and olives, salad
Tuesday: Grilled portobello burgers with tasty, as-yet-undecided toppings
Wednesday: Monday’s leftovers
Thursday: Thai noodle soup
So far, the pizza has been the only thing that everyone’s liked, although I have high hopes for the baked penne. We’ll see. Laziness often kills these grand plans before they even get off the ground, but having it in writing might guilt me into sticking with it. Or lying.
What? No pictures yet? It’s been all of 12 hours… :-)