Monday, September 22, 2008

FOOD.

Ever since I started the vegetarian lifestyle I've been researching lots of tasty recipes and ideas for cooking. I love to cook, but have never made tons of stuff from scratch. Now, that I'm stratteling the Vegetarian/VEGAN line, I have more of need to experiment with different ingredients and methods of cooking. In order to cook vegan, you pretty much have to re-learn how to cook. No more MEAT, MILK, EGGS, or CHEESE. OH MY! Yes, not only is it possible- it's VERY healthy adn VERY tasty.

There are many awesome substitutes for you typical animal products. 'Animal Products'. Have you ever really stopped and thought about what that term means. It means that people take the milk from cows (which is meant for baby cows to be nurished) and decided to pasturize and drink! What are eggs, really? Like, chicken abortion by-products? Is that totally wacky to think of it that way? Are eggs just the would-be little chicks? I'm not trying to be radical or gross, I swear, honest. I'm jes saying, when did eating animal products start? Why did it start? Personally, I don't think that Adam and Eve were snoopin in a Chickens nest for treats or slaughtering the roaming cattle or deer for dinner. There wasn't the forbidden poultry, the bird that God said 'don't eat!'. NO, it was forbidden fruit. That is what they ate. They ate plants.

Let me go on a min-tangent from my main tangent for a moment, if you will, Blog. EVEN IF I ever ate meat again (which I'm not planning on) I would NEVER eat animal products of any kind that was not free-range and organic. I'm not even going to go there right now and talk about animal foods. Also, I'm not going to go there and talk about factory-farming. I'm hungry and I don't want to lose my appetite. BUT abusing the animals which you raise for food and dousing your food in chemicals (most of which are illegal in other countried due to their likelyhood to be carcinogens) then that is ...tisk tisk, bad! Yuck yuck, bad bad.

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Back to the innocent intent of my blog today. OK, in order to cook vegan you practically have to re-teach yourself to cook. ( I said this already, yes). This means, in your pancakes you need to use a ground flax seed/water combo. OR banana instead of eggs. This means in and recipe which calls for milk, you use rice - soy - almond - or coconut milk instead of mooo mooo milk. You get used to using things like whole wheat flour and whole wheat pasta instead of the conventional, white, processed starchy kind.

What gives? What's the point of all of this? Well, I'll save the whole kitten-kaboodle for another post. But, your food is WAY healthier, your food is tastier, and your food makes you feel better!
You get equally full and satisfied. BUT, you don't have that 'uugghh, I can't move and feel like I have a little brick in my tummy' feeling after your meal is over. It's a-w-e-s-o-m-e. I didn't lose that much weight when I first converted, but I'm already a pretty little person after all. I did feel a lot better (both physically, and mentally). I didn't have that guilt or ignorance of nutritional value feeling after I had a mean. It's amazing what just being conscience of what you are eating and making a daily effort to get the nutrients you need does for your moral. You feel pretty good about yourself. OK, so I didn't lose that much weight ( I don't think...) but my husband dropped 10 pounds in what seemed like over nights. AND he isn't quite as convicted about the dairy/egg intake as I am...but just give me time...I"ll convert him yet!

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So, changing your lifestyle via diet is one thing. But changing your lifestyle via budget is a whole other ball of wax. My hubby and I have decided to eliminate the moderately small amount of debt that we have and we have a pretty strict time-line. We've both taken up second jobs. So, not only are we trying to eat more healthily, we are trying to spend less on food, and are twice as busy as before! So, when do we stop and cook our healthy meals? Man, it has been a task!
Last Friday I was feeling freakishly fatigued during the day and I realized the lack of veggies and fruit that I had over the couple of days before hand. YIKES! So now, if my man is working at night and I have a few free hours to myself. . . cooking from scratch is my new hobby! I started last week...it was ok. I didn't make much and ...well, it was the thought that counted. Last night I gave it another go and I'll be keeping my blog updated. So far, this post is too long. So I'm going to start a fresh one. Yum. Yum.

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