This is probably going to be a boring post because it’s about the boring every day things that I’ve been up to. So… strap in!
I realized that I haven’t made like some big announcement or anything and some people don’t know (because it’s no big deal) but at the beginning of the year I officially went vegetarian. I didn’t say a whole lot about it because usually when I announce things, I don’t do them. Well I’ve already had a couple of set backs, so I figure it’s no big deal to talk about it now. Mostly I’ve had problems with not eating seafood. Which brings me to being (un)officially pescetarian. (If only shrimp weren’t engineered in a lab somewhere to be so damn delicious.)
This has led to me making a lot more food at home.
What’s kind of odd is that I’ve always been kind of anti-vegetarianism. Just because most of the people I had known who were vegetarians were smug ass jerks about it. (Also because my favorite food was bacon… and filet mignon.) So why would I start this randomly?
Well I’d heard a couple of interesting arguments for laying off meat but none of it resonated with me. I love my cats and everything but I feel like if it were down to me and them, they’d get eaten. That is, if they didn’t eat me first- none of us have any loyalty to each other.
Then I read a book and while some of it missed home with me, other parts actually made really good points. It tied a lot of the disjointed information I’ve heard about the food industry together and asked the most basic question of- what are you really eating? So I’ve been spending this year trying to pay attention to that. I’ve found that it’s a lot harder than ‘just paying attention’ would seem. Shooting for vegetarianism was the goal but the overall journey is trying to notice what I’m doing everyday with the very basic/tedious parts of my life.
That probably sounds dopey but if you’re not doing it already- try it. Like notice how many times a week you just need to grab something to eat on the go. If you have a schedule and sit down to dinner at the same time every night does that work out for you or even how often you sleep all the way through the night. I’ve found it hard to be thoughtful of the tedious mundane crap that I’ve come to take for granted. Eating is a big one but so is just general life maintenance.
Before I decided to try this veg. deal, I kept a food journal and noticed that pretty much every meal I was eating had meat happening somewhere. Some of my snacks even had meat (or meat byproducts) in them. (Damn you pepperidge farms!) However, while giving up meat at first seemed daunting, it’s not nearly as hard as me giving up sweets would be. I mean seriously, sweets are too delicious.
Together with a friend, we made pumpkin whoopie pies with cream cheese icing for the filling.
They came out pretty delicious. I was impressed anyways. It was that same friends’ idea to make stuffed pretzels the next week. Which were incredibly amazing.
Although all of these pictures show a bunch of cheese in them… for some reason I haven’t been taking picture of the stir frys that we’ve made or the random fruit bowls that I’ve been putting together on the table. I really have been eating a lot more vegetables and I’m surprised at how much I like it. Mostly I’m excited for when it gets warm and more stuff will be in season. Plus I’m excited to use my blender for more smoothies… although I should probably make a soup in it before it gets warm!
Anyways, this isn’t like a new years resolution or anything- I started back around the holidays but knew I wouldn’t be able to get out of family dinners, so I was still eating some meat. Mostly I’m just trying to notice what I eat and why I eat it. I’m also trying to make more food myself. Because it turns out that I don’t suck at cooking, like I originally thought. It’s not super hard or anything. It’s just a pain to clean the stupid dishes every night.
In other news, I had to frog some monkeys this past weekend because they were HUGE.
So that was a bummer and set me back on my timeline. I’ve also been searching all over for some sock yarn that I thought I had to make argyle socks for the SF one-sock-a-month-group and have come to the conclusion that I must have taken it back to the store and not noted it in ravelry. Pretty lame on my part.
I really like these socks but I think it’s just my love for Veronica Mars that is blinding me.
Also! I really want to start a knitting podcast but need a podcast mate. Anyone interested? I’ve been drawing pictures from thinking about different topics I want to talk about. Ooookay, this is long and pointless now. I’m sorry.
Oh! P.S. Ask me anything you want to here.
