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.

Month Without Meat: Day 3

No meat: ding ding ding ding ding! :D

This was my first day waking up and going to sleep in Wisconsin, a situation I very much desire to make permanent as soon as possible (which is to say as soon after UCF graduation as possible). I love being with Josh. And as I've mentioned, he's fine with my making us dinners without meat, and has volunteered to make one himself. But that will probably happen this weekend, so I made us omelettes before my hardworkin' man had to get to work (onion for him, rosemary and pepper for me).

Spent the time after breakfast (I went back to bed before I made mine, so it was more like brunch) cleaning up the apartment and then made the rest of the couscous I purchased here last month. Josh wasn't a big fan, so I wanted to use it up, and hey, couscous is easy and quick. So I had some couscous and tomato slices, cleaned some more, got myself cleaned up, and headed out to get a few things from Copps.

Surprised Josh on his second bus home. It's HARD to surprise him and he liked it, so I was very pleased with myself. We had a dish I've made for us before as our dinner, just without meat (cucumber mint tomato basil salad served with sauce-topped brown rice). Made a sour cream, rosemary, and pepper sauce for myself and a jazzed up Italian dressing one for Josh.

Probably the best nutrition day so far, especially as far as dinner is concerned.

Month Without Meat: Day 2

No meat: check!

Cheerios for breakfast on the way to school with a travel mug of orange juice. I think we need to give the Simply line of juices to people who are addicted to less healthy things. They'd certainly have better hair. And those beverages are no less addictive.

Juices in general note: I love cranberry and cranberry apple, Newman's Own grape juice, and Simply Orange's... Orange juice, shockingly enough. All of these are a-ok in my book. The last two are also crazy high in sugar. I'm hoping it's just because grapes and oranges are sweet fruit, but damn. Almost 40 grams a glass. WTF, supposedly healthy drinking? Healthy in that context NOT supposed to be leading to diabeetus.

Anyway. Cheerios, a small veggie sandwich, and some couscous with peas before I left the house to go to the airport (are you thinking about patronizing the Lynx system to do this, as I thought about it? Don't.) and fly to Wisconsin, where I type this now, two days later. Today was meatless (yay!), and a bit of an improvement nutrition-wise, though there's certainly room for improvement.

Month Without Meat: Day 1

So today was a little challenging because I've got a cold, and when I've got a cold what I want is salty spicy chicken noodle soup with thick egg noodles. I knew I was getting a cold last night; I'm just hoping it goes away by tomorrow night, when I'll be snuggling with the love of my life on the couch.

But I did not eat meat today! I had a big handful of fruit and nut mix for breakfast minus the cranberries (blech). I wanted to just skip lunch and make a big dinner but my body demanded feeding around midday, so I got a flatbread wrap from Subway (downstairs at work; score!) with egg, bell peppers, tomato, and black olives. Because the latter in particular are a fatty, delicious comfort food. Sliced and ate a cucumber while I watched Jeopardy! and had a bowl full of peas.

Today was not necessarily a win for nutrition, so I'm going to have to be better about that tomorrow. I'll be able to make a decent breakfast in the morning (Honey Nut Cheerios + a peach I need to eat), and have a minestrone lunch before I leave for the airport. I'm low on funds and don't want to have to shell out for an airport dinner, so I'll try to make lunch really substantial.

Month Without Meat: Rules

I'm at home, which is probably a good way to start a project like this. I think typing out the guidelines I have in mind is a good idea. I'm doing this primarily because I can't stand the idea of animals being slaughtered. I know that eating meat contributes to that and that an animal (that I believe could feel fear) was killed sometime shortly before I buy its meat at the grocery store or restaurant. It makes me extremely unhappy and queasy. I grew up eating like an omnivore and I like eating steak just fine. But I can't have it in good conscience at this point. Everyone else in the world is free to make their own decisions, and I don't want to give anyone grief about their choice. This is mine.

This is also purely a test. I want to see if going without meat is painful or very difficult. I want to see if I can do something deliberately different for a whole month. I'd love to eat less meat. It's hard to imagine never eating it again, but maybe that's what this month will be the start of.

As I've mentioned this meatless month project to friends who are vegetarians to varying degrees-- there's a lot of alliteration going on; meatless month, varying vegetarians-- several have told me that there are immediate and long term health benefits, in particular from not eating beef. I haven't had the heart to look for that information since I was so scared by what I read about slaughterhouses, but I'm inclined to believe these people.

So, my rules for Meatless Month:
1) No meat. No beef, no pork, no poultry, no fish, no crab rangoon. Not even Krab rangoon, since that's made of fish.

2) I will only eat the cage free ones from the grocery store, and I will try to find a local provider of free range eggs. Having raised and kept chickens with my mom, I feel okay making the call that to me, eggs are not meat.

3) Milk, creams, cheeses, honey, and butter are okay. These might not be the healthiest choices, but I see them as products of animal life at human hands, not death (like gelatin).

4) Even if I start craving meat on day 2, I am not going to "celebrate" with a hamburger at the end of it all.

5) If Josh and I split a pizza and he gets pepperoni on his half, no big deal. He's said that he'd like to make us a vegetarian meal while I'm up there this weekend, though. Even asked his mom for recipe ideas! :} I love him. I'm making (and eating) tofu for the first time.

6) With my next paycheck I will get sissy gummy vitamins (since I know I will not take capsule ones) and dose appropriately.

7) Meatless month starts today, September 14. It ends Thursday October 14.