2 Weeks (mostly) Meat Free

We have been living the meat free life for 2 weeks now. The first week I did eat two lunch meat sandwiches because I did not want to waste the $7 I spent on organic lunch meat! Other than that all of our weekday meals were meat free. We went to a football game on Saturday and I had a chicken salad sandwich for lunch, but I think that was the only meat we ate that weekend. Here are our meals for the past two weeks:

Dinners:
Cheese Ravioli with vegetables
"lasagna" made with polenta, ToFurky Italian sausage, marinara sauce, zucchini, red peppers, and cheese
Cheese tortellini with spinach and fake chicken
Jason's Deli Veggie Muffelata
Veggie Fajitas at a restaurant
TVP stoganoff
Stir fry with rice
Stuffed portabella mushrooms

Lunches:
baked potato with vegetarian chilli and cheese
leftovers from dinner
veggie burger with cheese
Keith takes a peanut butter and jelly every day

Breakfast:
oatmeal with flax, cinnamon, and blueberries
egg and cheese biscuit (why does there have to be a McDonald's across the street from work)
Luna bar

It's been going well so far. I like to cook and it has been pretty easy to substitute out the meat in our dinners. We didn't really eat that much to begin with so it hasn't been a hard change. All of my recipes have turned out fine using soy milk. We are still using regular cheese because I just like it better than the substitutes.

We had Chic Fil A chicken biscuits today but we're sticking to meatless lunch and dinner. I'm going to try out veggie sausage for biscuits and gravy tomorrow. Can you tell we eat Fatty McFatterton breakfasts on the weekend?

Just hanging out

Jackson is obsessed with the dishwasher. He hears it open and comes crawling as fast as he can every time. Tonight, instead of just standing and swatting at the dishes and pulling out the rack like he usually does, he climbed all the way in! I'm sure that the appropriate parenting response would have been to pull him out. Instead I said, "Keith don't let him fall, I'm going to get the camera."

Meat Free

Another big event at our house is that we are no longer eating meat. I have several friends who are vegetarian so we have already been eating 2 or 3 meatless dinners per week. We recently watched a documentary called "Forks over Knives" and that helped us decide to go meat free. We are not going to eat meat through the week. We do like to go out on weekend nights so if we see a yummy looking meat free dish, we'll have it. If we don't then we'll eat meat. Weekends are also usually when we go to friends' houses so unless it's already a meat free house, we're not expecting anyone to go out of their way for us.

This decision has nothing to do with morality. I grew up on a farm. I had pet rabbits and watched my dad skin them for dinner, we had chickens that we ate, we had cows and pigs, I learned early that the purpose of these animals was to feed our family and I never felt sad when they died. It just seemed like part of life. My dad always hunted when I was little. It may make me seem mean but truthfully I don't worry myself much over the treatment of farm animals. I also think dogs and cats should live outside, but my husband (and most people) disagree so we have indoor dogs. But that's another rant...

This decision does have everything to do with health. The documentary we watched, as well as other information I have read, warned of the dangers of the Western Diet. We eat far more meat than any other industrialized nation and have far more health problems. I know a lot of people argue that anything in moderation is fine, but I don't think we even know what moderation means anymore.

I'll update in a few months to let everyone know how the (mostly) meat free life is going!

my dream's come true

It's been hectic around the Boddie house. Jackson is a busy little bee now that he can crawl so by the time he's in bed I'm usually too exhausted for blogging. But I have a few minutes so I wanted to share one of the greatest moments in my life: I washed an elephant!


When I was a little girl I saw some kids give an elephant a bath on Sesame Street. The song "splish splash, I was taking a bath" was playing and the kids were using giant deck brooms to clean the elephant. Since that day I have loved elephants and have always wanted to wash one. Since I live in Georgia and not on the African plains I thought that this was a dream that would never be realized, however my husband found a program at the Atlanta Zoo that said "don't miss your chance to bathe an elephant". So for my 30th birthday I became a keeper for a day at the zoo. I got to clean up elephant poop, put out their food, feed an elephant from my hands, hold a canvas while an elephant painted it, and give an elephant a bath. It was a wonderful day. I loved every second of it and when I retire I might become an elephant washer instead of a greeter at Wal Mart.