Paralysed by choice or lack thereof

Some have commented on my blogging hiatus, to give a proper answer, I decided, I needed to post.

When last I wrote, we had begun a journey into flexitarianism. All was going well at first. I was all aglow in optimism. As our family life became busier with school, work, and other commitments, my excitement started to fade. Without copious amounts of time to experiment, I found I was at a loss about what to prepare. Meals became very boring and lots of pasta and pizza were served.

My advice, now that I'm looking back: don't jump headlong into a new eating plan without... a plan. I didn't have enough quick and easy meals under my belt and I didn't have a meal plan. Although my husband is happy to ride along with me on this journey, he's mostly following my lead. Left to his own devices, he resorted to what he knew how to make: meals centered around meat.

As I explained to a friend today, I love cooking and have a large repertoire of recipes that I both enjoy making and are delicious. By removing meat from our diet, I essentially cut many of those out. I think part of my problem is that I was mourning  this loss. The other is that I had yet to build a new repertoire and was left both with little choice and too much choice.

A little confession here (no surprise to those that know me well): I'm competitive. I find I strive for more when those around me have similar goals. If they can do it, so can I! Well, a few of my friends are now changing their family's eating habits and pursuing vegetarianism. Enter my renewed enthusiasm! I also have others to share with and that is enormously important to me.

So what does my blogging future hold? Some book reviews (currently reading "How to Cook Everything Vegetarian" by Mark Bittman), updates on this year's garden, and some green products I can't live without.

Now I'm off to the kitchen to make Golden Quinoa Salad with Mango and Walnuts. (I've updated the recipe with a much easier way to cook the quinoa.) This will be in our fridge for the next few days as a wonderful lunchtime go-to. For dinner, I'll be attempting Bittman's Rosotto with Vegetables and Herbs. For dessert, likely a green smoothie. We'll also try a "raw ball" (see photo below) courtesy of "The Kind Diet" by Alicia Silverstone and suggested to me by an aforementioned friend. I'll keep you posted!

 Do you have a favourite easy, meatless recipe? Please share!

Vegetarian Lessons

It seems that lately all I think about is food. I admit I'm a little compulsive since declaring us a flexitarian family. At lunch yesterday, I realised I had an overwhelming choice of delicious options in my kitchen - leftover butternut squash lasagna*, vegetable samosas, split pea soup, masala hummus (thank you Julie for introducing me to this!), green smoothie, etc. I chose a samosa, some sweet potato fries (my 2yo's choice), followed by a green smoothie. Learning to eat vegetarian is an adventure! Bonus: in over a week, I've started to look at vegetables differently.

Strawberry banana green smoothie

For example, DH and I had ordered  vegetarian versions of our fave Thai meals (me: coconut curry, DH: pad thai). When looking at the leftovers the following day, he asked, "are you going to finish your curry, or is it all vegetables?" I laughed and said, "it's all vegetables and yes!" In the past, I would have eaten some of the veggies, but focused on the chicken. This time, everything (except for the huge chunks of onion) had an equal chance of being eaten and enjoyed. We loved our vegetarian dishes, perhaps even more than the chicken versions. I was very happily surprised by that.

Valentine's Day was Monday and I learned a few things...

1. I already can't consume as much sugar as I used to without feeling pretty sick. (I also am convinced that the eczema on my hands is linked to refined sugar, since it starts to burn after I eat something sweet.)
2. My craving for sweets is more psychological than physical. My body doesn't want the sweets now, my brain does. I'm working on changing that.
3. Missing my green smoothie - which I did that day because of all the food being consumed - causes me to feel not only guilty, but also incomplete.
4. My husband is wonderful. (Okay, to be fair, that one I knew already.) He came home with dinner - something he never does unannounced - vegetable samosas, Indian split pea soup, 6 california rolls, hemp hermit cookies, and some incredible Green & Black's Carmel chocolate. He wanted to show his support for how hard I've been working to get our family eating better. I was in tears.

And the quinoa obsession continues... We've made two cookie recipes from Quinoa 365: Healthy Cookies and Oatmeal Raisin cookies. Here are some of the ingredients for Healthy Cookies:

Dry ingredients: whole wheat flour, sunflower seeds, rolled oats, flax seeds, coconut

Cooked quinoa

Before baking

Yummy Healthy Cookies

Everyone who has tried these cookies, young and old, loves them. They're not too sweet (1 1/4 cups brown sugar for 56 cookies) and are full of good things.

When I made the Oatmeal Raisin cookies, I had only a 1/2 cup raisins and so I used chopped medjool dates to make up the other cup. These are also really tasty and I prefer the dates - which are a new experience for me - to the raisins. Dates are very sweet, however, and next time I'll reduce the sugar to compensate. These cookies are gluten free as they use quinoa flour.

I've been doing some homework to make sure I'm covering my nutritional bases and to get some suggestions for a veggie newbie. I'm currently picking my way through the Vegetarian Starter Kit from Vegetarian Times. While I don't agree with everything (I'm not convinced of the safety of consuming non-fermented soy products, i.e. soymilk), here are some things that stand out for me:

• eating a variety of plant protein sources over an entire as a way of getting a "complete protein" rather than focusing on having it in each meal (the older way of thinking)
  
• better to focus on dairy-free sources of calcium and limit animal protein, a high intake of which encourages calcium loss from bones
• there is a link between type 1 (juvenile) diabetes and milk protein allergy
  
• using sliken tofu instead of sour cream in dips - can't wait to try this

 One of the best things to happen this week: I think drinking green smoothies prevented K (2yo) and I from getting F's stomach flu. Hurray!

Are you eating meat less or even never? Please share any lessons, tips, resources, or recipes you find helpful.

* I modified the linked recipe by using a combo of butternut squash and pumpkin that I had frozen and then mixing in some cooked quinoa. If you choose to do this, I'd say cook up about 1/2 cup dried quinoa and reduce the squash to 3 cups, otherwise it won't all fit in the baking dish (as I found out). I also used spinach lasagna noodles to give the meal some colour.

Flexitarian Family

I've recently come to the decision that we, as a family (but especially DH and I), can and should be eating less meat (red, white, fish, etc.). I'm aiming for vegetarian-ish, which apparently is called flexitarian. This means that we will endeavour to eat vegetarian as much as we can. So far, so good.

Why not go "whole-hog" (if you'll pardon the pun)? Most importantly: DH and I love meat and I don't especially love vegetables. In fact, I'm a very reluctant vegetable eater and I've struggled hard to incorporate them into my meals. Give me boiled or steamed veggies (with a very few exceptions) in a pile on my plate and I'm unlikely to eat them. For this reason, despite the fact that I've long aspired to vegetarianism, I didn't think it was realistic and figured I'd probably starve.

So why on earth do I want to do this? Good question. Without getting into the many long and difficult arguments, I'll give you my main reasons:

• Ethical and Financial - The more I learn about how the majority of food animals are raised, fed, bred, and slaughtered I don't want to be a part of it. There are better alternatives, but doing things "right" costs much more money than assembly-line, corner-cutting factory farming. So either we find more money in the budget, or we treat meat as a treat. The big bonus to the alternative sources I've found is the taste - unlike anything I've ever tasted before and so delicious.
• Health - I want to eat delicious food. I don't want to feel that I'm missing out on meat. If that happens, this will end up as a short-lived experiment rather than a lifestyle change. So I've got to find great-tasting meals with lots of variety. It also means that eating out will become even more of a rarity. I'll be cooking more of our meals and by default, we'll be making better choices with our food.

What spurred this on? Mostly a lot of reading and a lot of thinking. About a year ago I read The Omnivore's Dilemma and In Defense of Food. Excellent books, great reads and really thought-provoking. I think they should be required reading. A month ago, I finally watched Food Inc. and my mom's group book club started reading Omnivore's Dilemma (at my request). I just finished the short and sweet Food Rules and have started our next book club selection: Eating Animals. But long before all of this, I took a first year university philosophy course on ethics, where we discussed the philosophical arguments for and against vegetarianism. The seed was planted then, so to speak.

So we've been at this for over a week, officially, and I'm thrilled both with how much we're enjoying our new way of eating and with how easy it has been. DH has been wonderfully supportive and on-board. He is a pretty adventurous eater and has loved sampling the new recipes like this 4-cheese Manicotti.

4-cheese Manicotti - unbelievably delicious

I followed the recipe, but for these exceptions: omitted the spinach - didn't have any, used our favourite Zarky's sauce (no extra anything in it, as close as you can get to making your own) instead of following the marinara recipe. I served it with a cheese garlic bubble bread. Words can't describe how tasty this meal was. I asked my husband at the end of the meal, "did you miss the meat?" His answer, "no way!" While the example may not have fulfilled the "healthy" motivation, it sure was encouraging and satisfying.

Which brings me to my next post... My Quinoa Obsession