This is the beginning.
I hate vegetables.
Do I sound like I'm four?
I also eat like I'm four.
I love breakfast, and if I ate breakfast foods for three meals and two snacks a day I'd be very, very happy. I love carbs, I love dairy, and I adore baking. Fruits are fine but I'll always eat the cheese or crackers or peanut-butter slathered sammich first. I'll make sure peaches or bananas or oranges or pineapple get on the plates of the four kids in my house and if there's some leftover, I might get around to eating it after I get the dishes done and the crusted food scrubbed off of the children.
Meat's okay, but it's best in the form of pepperoni on a pizza, or chicken all tucked into a bed of marinara and cozied under a blanket of fresh mozzarella. Oh, and I do love me some hamburger- though I have made the switch to ground turkey to be healthier. If we go out to eat though, you can bet your 2 for $20 deal that I'm going for the real stuff, likely paired with, you guessed it, cheese. There's this one burger at a nearby restaurant where the meat lives in between two pieces of cheesey, herby foccacia toast and has, like, 26 forms of cheese spilling itself all over it. I just wiped off a little bit of drool off my keyboard.
Oh, and remember, I hate vegetables. I just don't like the way they taste. I'll eat green beans and peas because they don't taste all that veggie-like to me. Oh sure, I'll eat tomatoes and corn, too. I'm not an android. What's that you say? I must like carrots, because everyone likes carrots? Wrong-o. I think carrots taste like Palmolive soap. I will use them, along with similarly-soapy celery, as a catalyst to get ranch dip into my mouth, and that's how I get them down. But if they're texture is anything but super-crunchy, I won't touch them.
At the end of a long day of eating awesome like this, when the kids are in bed, I'm usually unwinding by watching something in my Netflix queue, or at least have something on in the background while I'm doing something else (like alternating pinning recipes for cheesey carbey baked stuff and articles about clean eating and squats). Two nights ago I was doing just that, having chosen to watch a documentary called "Vegucated." The independent film followed three volunteers who agreed to go Vegan for six weeks and learn about its history, philosophy, and benefits. I'm always up for a good documentary.
I pinned nothing for the next hour and a half. I was captivated.
It was a smartly-done, very entertaining look at being Vegan; but not only was it a really well-made film...it actually Vegucated me. I can look at a pig and say, "that pig will die so I can eat my bacon." I can look at a cow and have no trouble ordering that patty melt goodness I mentioned. I'm a subscriber to the cycle of life as God has created it.
What I didn't know was how that process has evolved over time. Due to increasing demands of consumerism, things have to be done more in mass; animals are suffering through the process, a very real suffering; and the pollution this is all creating is staggering. And that is as far as I'm going to go with the information, because I want to be clear that whatever your choices are in your eating lifestyle, I fully support you. I have farm friends, I have vegan friends, I have vegetarian friends, I have meat-obsessed friends. I love all of you and am happy to eat dinner with you any time. If you're interested in the information I learned about, you can look it up yourself. The purpose of this new blog is not to Vegucate you; it's for me to be very public about my limited palate, and my journey into making better choices. I hate vegetables. I am becoming a vegetarian.
Yep, I said vegetarian, not vegan. You're welcome to point out the obvious here that if animal compassion is a big part of my decision to do this, really I shouldn't be eating dairy products either. I don't love cute little chicks any less than Wilbur. But I need to start with something I can stick with, and I start to weep over the absence of egg salad, goat cheese on my salad, and really, cheeseless pizza? No. Just, no.
But becoming a vegetarian. I just might be able to do this.
Buoyed by lots of support and ideas and resources by a single Facebook post, I started small the very next day; I walked into Cub for milk and bananas and came out with broccoli, cucumber, spinach, zucchini, and tomatoes.
My aunt suggested I start by appreciating the color of vegetables. Which made me remember that while some people think it's weird and maybe a little annoying, I love food photography. Food sits still. Food doesn't worry about where to put their arms or how to get rid of their extra chins. And, you know what? Broccoli really is a lot prettier than a casserole.
Oooh, pretty.
But, oh, I just still hate broccoli so much... I don't like it raw, I rreeaaaally don't like it's mushy nastiness when thawed from a frozen bag. Broccoli cheese soup, you ask? I must like broccoli in that form, at least. No. No, I don't. It still tastes like broccoli. But most of these encounters were prepared by other people. Maybe, just maybe, if I prepare the stuff, I can make peace with it and approach it with a little less judgement.
Another helpful tip from a friend who is, by profession, and nutritionist, is to start by pairing vegetables with a little bit of fat- say, a pat of butter. Now, butter? Butter I can do! I steamed the broccoli, because that seemed to make it look a little more appealing. And then I put on that lovely little golden square of...buuuttttterrrrrrr.....just drooled on my keyboard again, slurp, slurp.
I took a bite. And you know what? I didn't die. I might have even enjoyed it a bit. Don't go crazy; I said a bit. The point is, if I didn't die from broccoli, then there is hope, one buttery green at a time.
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