08 Jun, 2015
21-day vegetarian challenge: day one
By andrea tomkins in Challenge me, challenge you,Recipes and Food
I haven’t written about this here, but awhile back my eldest decided she didn’t want to eat beef anymore, or at least, drastically reduce the amount she was eating. I was ok with this, because I didn’t really want to eat it anymore either. There are many reasons why reducing the amount of red meat we eat is probably a good idea. Here’s my top two:
1) The environmental argument
Factory farms are crap on the environment. (No pun intended.)
2) The “kindness to animals” argument
Factory farms are pretty awful places. As an animal lover who struggles to find her own place in the world sometimes, I am finding it harder and harder to ignore what happens in places like that. Once you get to know an animal, like a pet, it makes it harder to reconcile the fact that we are animal eaters. We were talking about it around the dinner table last night. I believe humans evolved to be omnivores, but does that give us the right to mistreat the animals that we eat? Creatures that feel love and joy? I don’t think so.
Mark Bittman, food journalist and author of many books about food including Food Matters, wrote a great piece about it in the New York Times aptly titled: Rethinking the Meat-Guzzler. The bottom line is that our increased meat consumption has created a number a very serious problems.
(I sense my mother rolling her eyes at this point. (Hi mom!) It may be worth noting that I am the daughter of Eastern European parents and there was meat on the table every night, no matter the season. So I’m bucking tradition here.)
I can’t honestly say that beef hasn’t passed my lips these last few months. It has once or twice, most recently in the form of a Chinese crispy beef dish that I can’t refuse, but I’m not eating nearly the same quantity that I used to. And by default, neither has my family, because I’ve simply replaced beef with fish and chicken when I’m planning our menus for the week. And you know what, I haven’t missed beef that much.
I touched upon a burger-related epiphany in this past post. I love food, and I suspect I’m not alone when I say that meals can represent a kind of comfort to me: like the happy feeling that comes with a family BBQ on a sunny day. But it’s the comfort and taste that is more important to me, the fact that beef is the primary ingredient in a given meal is less so. So I have no problem eating vegetarian versions of traditionally beefy foods like lasagna, tacos, and burgers if I’m still in that happy place. Does that make sense?
Soooo, that’s where this comes in:
I decided I wanted to challenge myself and cut meat out of my diet for 21 days. Confession: I spoke to a few people about it this past week, but in terms of a vegan challenge (no meat, no dairy, no eggs). I ultimately decided it’d be better if I eased into this as a vegetarian challenge, and not take such a huge leap right out of the gate. (That being said, I will try to make half of my total meals to be vegan meals too. We’ll see how that goes.)
I think I can do this, but today of all days, I am woefully unprepared to begin: a busy weekend, no meal plan, no groceries in the house, and looming work deadlines. I fear I’ve set myself up for failure before I’ve even started. Oh well. Onward and upwards! I’ll be writing about this here and there, and tracking my meals (with recipes if applicable, right here.)
p.s. I’ve issued these kinds of challenges before, but I’m afraid to ask anyone to join me on this one. It’s a biggie. That being said, if you DO want to join me and give it a shot, I’d love the company.
