Goal Met: Vegetarianism

This one wasn’t actually that difficult in concept. I’m just not a big meat eater. I do enjoy beef (in all it’s glorious varieties) and chicken and eat them often but only a few times a week, trying to balance them with vegetable heavy meals. I enjoy pork in sausage or bacon form but that’s about it and I don’t eat seafood, veal, lamb or pretty much any other animal. The one thing that I thought might be am issue is my Saturday cheeseburger. It’s a nice little treat at the end of the week that I do look forward to. I doubted I would embrace the ‘lifestyle’ but I do think reducing meat consumption overall is good for my health and the environment so wanted to give it a shot and see how it went.

The first issue is by the time I got around to scheduling this it was well into winter and the vegetable options available were pretty slim. Lots of root vegetables and your standard hydroponic greens along with stuff trucked in from who knows where. You ever have a supermarket tomato in January? It’s enough to make a grown man cry (I took down my tomato garden to make space for my kids to play in the backyard and I hope one day they appreciate that sacrifice).

However, since it was winter it was a perfect time for soups and stews which mostly used canned vegetables since they are designed to be made in the winter. I busted out some favorites like butternut squash soup and minestrone (without the pancetta of course) mixing in some new stews from around the world. Maafe was a big hit.. A sweet potato stew with chickpeas and coconut milk that I had several bowls of.

Pasta was featured prominently as well. Nothing fancy here just the usual pasta with a variety of sauces (tomato and pesto) with bread to scoop up all the sauce. I usually make pasta twice a week or so but it became my go to when I needed something quick for lunch or dinner.

I.. Tried to eat salads. I really did. They have a really nice salad bar at work and full of optimism I created a complex salad with greens, vegetables, and even come microgreens. Maybe it was just the time of year or the fact it’s a corporate cafeteria but the salad was really bland. The greens didn’t taste like much and the vegetables were all kind of listless. I have a personal thing where I just refuse to keep buying food if it isn’t any good so I had to pivot off the salad bar idea.

I knew getting greens was critical so I turned to powdered greens, mixing them into smoothies to take the rough edges off the taste. I will note that those smoothies powered me through the afternoon better than caffeine sometimes which I thought was odd so I double checked the greens and I saw that the one I got had ‘plant caffeine’ so yeah, I’m glad I wasn’t taking them at night because that would have backfired on me.

The only thing that concerned me was how much protein I was taking in. I wanted to ensure that I was getting enough to support my activity level so I used a two fold approach. I got some pea-protein to add to my smoothies (around 30g) and I went all in on the bean train.  I added them to everything. Making a soup? Beans. Nice stew you got cooking.. Beans. Hey is that pasta? OK hold up keep your damn beans off my pasta. Vegetarian Chili? That’s good man.. Load up them beans. Needless to say my poor stomach was very confused at this sudden intake of fiber and started wilding out but after a few days we stomped out our beef (get it?) and things returned to normal.

The two weeks went pretty quick and I found that it wasn’t that big of a life change. I mean, I can still eat bread, pasta, and pizza so really those are the holy trinity for me. I thought that maybe this is something I should be doing?

Then I had a bomb cheeseburger at a restaurant and said ‘Forget all that noise’