Month Without Meat: What Have We Learned, Class?

I realize I wasn't dynamite about blogging this process. I decided not to do the "what I ate everyday" posts since that seemed a tad too self-focused.

My mistakes:

I ate meat once. My aunt/second cousin/favorite relative (that I live with) and her wife invited me to have dinner with them and a friend at The Ravenous Pig, a schmancy restaurant in Winter Park. I've never been and figured it was mostly a meaty place-- I was correct, and couldn't and didn't think of a way to ask the waiter if there were meatless options or if something could be modified. I had a lamb burger and good jeezy creezy it's one of the most delicious things I've ever eaten. I also had a glass of really good wine with dinner. Alcohol helped the guilt. Resolved when I got home to do better. There was a fair bit of resolving to do better over the course of the month.

I got the gummy vitamins and loved them. Didn't look at the label until the second day. THIS IS A CRUCIAL STEP. Gummy vitamins have gelatin in them. I didn't have the cash to get other vitamins and decided to take them and find a suitable replacement (maybe a powder I could mix into juice in the morning?) to use when I'd exhausted the month's supply I'd purchased. Ended up finding a company in California, Gummi King, that makes vegan gummy vitamins using carageenan, a substance discussed in a previous entry. Just got them today and they're not as yummy as the others but they are worlds better than the pill vitamins I can't make myself take. So this problem was solved! Really happy about this. Also they were on a BOGO free sale and shopping was free. Best find of the project.

Trying to sauté tofu. The best way to prepare tofu, and I speak from three separate attempts to do so and am thus an expert, is to dry fry it and then soak it in marinade. There is no way to mess this up. Or if there is I have not yet encountered it, so life seems good so far. Also I really am an expert at the dry frying method now, and I'm getting pretty good at producing marinades with my limited kitchen stock!

I made mashed potatoes out of yukon gold potatoes and left the skins on because I like seeing skin in my mashed potatoes. A coworker (who ate them) gave me the piece of unsolicited advice that the skins were poisonous. And she didn't say thank you. I was so cranky about that I looked it up AND asked my mom. Turns out what my coworker said is technically true but I have nothing to worry about: the potatoes were not green under their skins (I cubed them before cooking) and even if they had been, the amount I or anyone including thankless coworker would consume is probably waaaaaay too low to have a toxic effect. Still, the things you know. I think I handled her telling me gracefully. I hope so. I wanted to cry at the time and I was really mad she didn't say thank you. But this was meatless month, not interpersonal skills interval.

Things I was surprised to learn:

Gummy vitamins have gelatin in them.

Many cheeses, not just a few fancy ones, require animal-based rennet (you don't want to know) to be produced. There are nearly if not just as many non-animal-based rennet produced cheeses, so that's good. I did not know any of this when I started meatless month and so I allowed myself to have cheese as things called for it or as it was presented, but I think I'm going to try to be more mindful of this in the future.

Soy milk is terrible (at least by itself; it's fine to use in tea). Tofutti's sour cream is awful. Almond milk is AWESOME. Truly, almond milk + honey nut cheerios is good enough to be dessert.

The internet is as usual a great resource. I found lots of recipes to try, helpful information whenever I searched hard enough, and several blogs about "living vegetarian."

Another, generally more polite coworker, who is a vegetarian herself and very supportive of this endeavor, mentioned several "fake meats," and said she didn't have a problem eating something made to represent a chicken tender, for example. I knew these products existed but worried the cool kid vegetarians would snub me for trying them. I haven't yet, but her point was that it's fine to substitute something for something you've had an enjoyed. Like a Boca burger, or some of those not-really-chicken chicken tenders.

I'm proud of:
Getting through the month without quitting. I realize that the lamb burger was a huge cheat not very far into the process, but there's been no meat since then. I've never tried to go without something like this, and I'm pretty proud of getting through it.

Also after the lamb burger, I've asked servers at restaurants for options if I needed them. Never had a problem. This was very encouraging. At Carrabba's, for example, the waitress mentioned that if I was trying to eat like a vegetarian that the soup I was going to order had beef stock in it. Crisis averted.

Overcoming the vitamin dilemma.

My friends (in very nearly every circumstance), my sweet sweet boyfriend, his family, and my family, for giving me no crap about this and sometimes making suggestions and in a few cases making special meals to accommodate what I was trying to do. I don't think any of them read this, but thanks!

Resolutions (as I said, a lot of these throughout the month!):

Ovo-lacto vegetarianism it is! I'm going to stick to this. No more meat. It will probably be challenging, but I'm committed to making this transition.

I will not be too shy to ask for an alternative or more information at restaurants. The good experiences with this have really helped this particular pledge.

Investigate more recipes, and plan a few meals for Josh and I that involve some of those meat substitutes instead of just tofu and other no meat, no fake meat dishes. He really has been great about this process and will probably end up an at-home lacto-ovo vegetarian, since I'll be making dinners for us. He's a keeper.