Not Easy Being Green

I've been moping around this past week, complaining of being over tired. 

Who am I kidding, I do that every week. 

But I had a doctor's appointment coming up today anyway so I started adding to my whine, "I wonder if I should just get my iron checked."

"They're probably just going to tell you to stop staying up until 1am," husband informed me.

"You shouldn't be anemic if you're eating enough vegetables," husband's best friend, who is Vegan, added.

Men.

I knew they were right on both counts.  Hate it when that happens.  I can give you 803 reasons to justify staying up until 1am, but not eating enough vegetables as a vegetarian...yeah. That's totally my bad.

When I started this lifestyle, I was excited to load up my grocery cart with green things.  I was inspired to discover how to do this healthy, ethical-eating thing.  And I did well.  But then I got lazy.  I started eating like a preschooler again.  The priority was horking down the cheese and the carbs before even considering a vegetable or even a fruit, because they tasted better.  Kids eat up all the pears?  I play the martyr and "let them eat them all," as they do, after all, come first.  What?  Have an at-the-ready apple instead?  Uh, no thank you.

Bad. Bad bad bad bad bad. I also think I get my water needs met through coffee and the milk in my cereal.  So. 

I had my labs drawn anyway today; my iron is fine, but we're still waiting on results from folic acid levels, which can be more accurate in diagnosing anemia.  In the meantime, I went on a grocery run today and stuffed my cart with green.  Okay, it wasn't stuffed with green, but at least five items were, and that's four more than I've been tossing in there.  I strategically placed them on the check-out belt first before the check-out clerk, who most certainly doesn't give a flying head of cauliflower what I purchase, could cast a judgemental glance at the Scooby-Doo snack crackers and Oreos that came just behind the bag of spinach.

Maintaining this vegetarian thing isn't easy. But today I'm returning to kicking myself in the fatigued butt, folic acid be damned, and working harder to enjoy what really should be on my plate.  And considering the baked goat cheese and herbed tomato bruschetta with Caesar salad and fresh parmesan dinner I had tonight, really, I think I'll be okay.

Quichey, Quichey

1) Yes, I'm still here.  December was...was...a whole lot of ink on the calendar and endless post-its of to-do and to-buy and to-call lists.  To-blog didn't make the cut.  I still have Christmas cards to mail.

2) Yes, I'm still a vegetarian.  I considered a meal or two of exception with the holidays, as our family's traditions include Swedish meatballs on Christmas Eve, and it's like eating a memory, a very tasty memory.  But in a timely twist, my sister decided to mix it up and cook up something totally different.  And while her pecan-crusted fancy-pants tenderloin made me drool right onto my salad, I held my own and stuck with the comfort food side-dishes of lefse, mashed potatoes, fruit salad with fruit-cancelling marshmallows, carrots, more lefse, some lefse, a bowl of cranberry-squash soup my incredible Mama bought just for me, Oreo truffles, and some lefse.  I fared just fine.

Still bewildered by last month's aftermath, I find myself unable to travel down any written path considered thought-provoking, so I'll just stick to something simple: what I had for dinner tonight.

I got a fantastic cookbook for Christmas: How to Cook Everything Vegetarian, by Mark Bittman.  I flipped through this food-version of War and Peace and landed on a chapter about eggs and cheese.  There I read about quiche.  Quiche!  Of course!  I like quiche!  Why haven't I thought about making this before?  Here is my simple cheddar-and-feta quiche with Rosemary.  (Of note: I might have used my favorite Pillsbury cheater pie crust again, as I did in the Indian Pot Pie that I blogged about last year in 2013). 

And yes, that is roasted broccoli you see there.  It still hasn't killed me.  Which is good, because then my blog site moniker would be all kinds of wrong.

My first attempt at this dish?  Come over here, pucker up and gimme another quiche. I did good.