Going Vegetarian(er) - Part 2

In my last post, I talked about some of the reasons why I (and others) might want to move toward having a little less meat in our diets. I also talked about some of the "thought-process" reasons that keep a lot of people from doing so. In this post, I'd like to share some more practical tips about how to actually go about reducing the amount of meat in your diet without ending up with endless meals of salad. My mom loves salad, so this was never an issue for her. I, however, get tired of lettuce, and my husband firmly believes that lettuce should mostly go toward feeding rabbits. And then we should eat the rabbits.
There are, however, several rather easy methods to ease yourself into a "less meat" diet, without becoming a rabbit-like lettuce eater. Here are some of them!

1. Reduce/ eliminate meat content in dishes you already eat. This is probably the least "system-shocking" method, and the one most likely to sneak its way past a spouse who is still firmly in the carnivore category. Take dishes that you already eat which are "meat-and-something-else" and just reduce the meat content and up the veggie content. You can do this a little at a time, until you have very little to no meat in the dish. Now, choose your dishes carefully: this works far better with spaghetti than it does with roast and potatoes. Your spouse might notice if you served Nugget of Roast with Pile of Potatoes.

For example:
Spaghetti: reduce meat, increase tomato sauce and onions. You can make spaghetti sauce with no meat (gasp), or you can use a little meat for flavor (my preferred method)
Lasagna: same thing. More cheese or veggies (squash goes well in lasagna), less meat.
Other Pasta: Many cheesy pastas don't need any meat at all, or very little. Chicken fettucine alfredo does not need much, if any, chicken. Manicotti can be stuffed with just herbed ricotta. Pasta and pesto is a great no-meat meal.
Soups: Broccoli-cheese-ham soup can have very little ham. Tomato soup and grilled cheese doesn't need any meat. Beans and ham can be done with only Hint of Ham for flavor.
Pizza: Try Hawaiian with very little to no ham (more onions and pineapple), or Mexican with very little ground beef (more beans and corn and cheese), or pepperoni that leans more cheese-ward. Or be adventurous and do a veggie pizza! (green peppers, onions, fresh basil, olives, mushrooms, tomatoes, etc.)

Tropical Pizza toppings

Tropical Pizza

2. Learn to base a meal around a vegetable rather than a meat. If you are anything like I was, when you go to make a meal, you first decide what meat you have to use, and then decide what you are going to do with it. Chicken? Chicken salad, chicken alfredo, fried chicken, etc. Beef? Roast and potatoes, chop suey beef, tacos, etc. My biggest challenge was learning not to start with a meat when planning my meals. What really helped me was learning several good, hearty vegetables that can serve as a "base" for many different meals. For example, pumpkin makes a wonderful "meal base" vegetable. You can make pumpkin soup, pumpkin gnocchi, pumpkin pasta, pumpkin hummus and pitas, curried pumpkin, etc. Look up pumpkin recipes on blogs and recipe websites, especially vegetarian blogs. Do the same with other vegetables: zucchini, sweet potatoes (kaukau), and other squash all make excellent "meal bases."

Pumpkin Curry

3. Make a "side" into a "meal." I knew plenty of recipes that didn't have meat in them -- but they were "side dishes" not "meals." Getting over this distinction in my mind really helped, so that I could take a "side dish" and turn it into the focal point for a real meal! For example, a simple soup becomes a meal if you add a loaf of french bread. Same for a no-meat pasta dish, if you add a salad and a bread. Add side dishes and you suddenly have a complete meal!

Kaukau (Sweet Potato) Soup with French Bread

Creamy Tomato-Roasted Garlic Soup

4. Research and branch into new recipes! I did a LOT of reading vegetarian blogs. They often have ideas for meals I would have never thought of on my own, and the pictures often make me eager to try something new and different, and when you are trying a completely new and different recipe, often the fact that it does not have meat in it is not so noticeable (making it so that you do not have to mention this fact to your significant other). Flavor combinations that I never thought to try before (such as a savory vegetable 'pie' with mustard sauce) and beautiful examples went a long way toward inspiring me to try my hand at "less meat" meals.

Cabbage-stuffed Sweet Potato Steam Buns (Bao)

Some blogs I have found particularly helpful are:

Green Kitchen Stories
My New Roots
Thank Your Body
Naturally Ella

Also, Pinterest has whole vegetarian sections or boards which can lead you to recipes as well as other good blogs to read.

For those living in areas where internet is expensive, you might be encouraged to hear that I have found blogs like this seem to not eat up as large an amount of internet as I was expecting. Not as much as, say, Facebook. Also, try getting new ideas and recipes from other people you know or vegetarian cookbooks if you really don't want to spend the time online. Often e-cookbooks are available on Barnes and Noble.com or Amazon for quite good prices, and you can then read them on your computer or iPad or tablet or eReader.

Mostly, just don't be afraid to try something new! You won't die from a week or two of no/little meat, or a terrible vegetarian recipe. I've made quite a few things that sounded so good on the blog and were so not good on my plate! Hopefully you have a forgiving family --- or perhaps you should try new recipes in small quantities when you are alone in the kitchen! I really enjoyed learning to cook vegetarian recipes because I found that it challenged me to learn new things in cooking rather than sticking with the same old basic recipes. I think that, as a result, I have a much wider range of possibilities when I'm thinking up my meal plan for the week. Don't give up right away because you don't know where to begin or because one meal was a flop. Keep experimenting, and eventually you will become comfortable cooking with different ingredients, and hopefully your grocery budget/ health/ conscience will be better for it!

Pitas, Humus, Pineapple Salsa, and Roasted Cabbage

Going Vegetarian(er) - Part 1

 First off, I am not a vegetarian. I probably never will be. I really, really love steak. A lot.

Ok, now that that is out of the way, I will say that in my house we really only eat meat once or twice a week, and that is usually chicken. We eat a lot of "vegetarian" meals, for a couple of reasons. First, meat is really expensive. This is true in the states, as well as here in Papua New Guinea. Vegetables, if you do not buy them in the exotic, out of season, and organic sections of the grocery store (we don't have those sections at the market across the road), are quite a bit cheaper than meat, and therefore eating semi-vegetarian is a wonderful boon to the grocery budget.

Pastry-Wrapped Asparagus

Second, I just really don't think we need that much meat in a healthy diet. There are quite a few studies indicating that a vegetarian, semi-vegetarian, or otherwise lowish-in-meat diet is quite good for you, especially if you don't go replacing the meat with all kinds of high-carb or highly processed foods like tones of pasta or "tofurkey." Tofurkey, to me, sounds more like something I might give my toddler to play with than something I might actually put in my stomach. Maybe I'm prejudiced.

Anyway, for whatever reason, my family does not eat copious amounts of meat, and we do, quite often, have meals which have never mooed, clucked, quacked, oinked, or bleated. I have recently had several conversations with friends of mine who, for some reason or another, would like to reduce the amount of meat that they consume, but aren't really sure how to do so. I totally understand! A couple of years ago, when I went to make dinner I always would start with a meat and then decide what to do with it. I didn't really know how to even start thinking of a "vegetarian" meal. What would that consist of? Salad? Yuck. Buttered noodles? With… spinach? But over the last couple of years I have gotten to where I am quite comfortable coming up with and eating a meal with no meat in it, and, wonder of wonders, my husband is too! So I thought I would try to share a few tips with those who would like to move in the direction of cooking and eating less meat. In this post, I will suggest some "motivation" tips, and in the next post I will suggest some "practical" tips. (And I'll share some photos of delicious vegetarian meals. For your enjoyment and inspiration.)

First, I would decide why you want to reduce the amount of meat in your diet. Budget? Health? Moral issues? Ease of cooking? Lack of freezer space? Once you nail down exactly why you are wanting to move this direction, then you can better decide how to proceed. For example, if budget or health is your reason, then you might be just as happy cooking meals with just a little meat in them rather than no meat. If ease of cooking is your reason, then putting in just a little meat is probably going to be just as hard as quite a bit of meat, and you may want to actually try completely vegetarian meals. And obviously, if moral issues with eating meat has you wanting to go vegetarian, then you would probably want to cut out meat altogether.

Broccoli-Peanut Pesto with Button Noodles

Second, I would try to determine and deal with any issues that are keeping you from trying to reduce meat in your diet. Is your significant other resistant to the idea?  Are you worried that you might wither away to nothing or get horribly malnourished without the proper "protein" in your diet? Do you just have no idea where to start?

When I started considering a "less meat" diet, I was a little worried that I was going to have problems being properly nourished (I was pregnant at the time with my first child) and that I was going to have SERIOUS problems keeping my extremely active, high-metabolism husband properly fed. I had the idea that, although it is possible to get all your nutrients from a vegetarian diet, it required an in-depth knowledge of the exact nutrient value of each veggie that you consume and careful planning to make sure that you constructed the proper proteins from several different veggies.

Veggie-Cheese Omelet with Avocado and Toddler

 While this may be true for someone going completely vegan, or even perhaps completely vegetarian (I don't know for sure, I've never tried that), it is most certainly not true for a simple reduction of the amount of meat that you are eating. Studies (which I have not the time or inclination to cite here, but you are welcome to go research) have actually shown that the Standard American Diet has way too much meat in it. More traditional societies, as we see here in PNG, eat far less meat. And while I'm certainly not denying the necessity of protein (even meat protein) in our diets, I would argue that we certainly don't need it every meal, or even every day. Again, you are welcome to research this on your own… I have, and although I do not remember all the references I used, I can tell you that this is the conclusion I came to after quite a bit of research, and not just internet blogs. =]

Watermelon-Strawberry Koldskaal

For my husband, I think the penny dropped that he might not require so much meat to be healthy when he met Kulong and Yandu, the two Papua New Guinean guys that he works with. They are quite healthy, rather large, muscular guys, who could probably outwork most American guys with one arm tied behind their backs. These guys eat a rather traditional New Guinean diet, which consist mostly of vegetables. The occasional meat in a traditional diet would be a treat, eaten at a feast or special day, because animals that are eaten are either hunted or grown, not bought at the grocery store and grown in a feed lot. Morgan reported wonderingly to me that Kulong had told him that he ate meat probably once every two or three weeks. From then on, Morgan has been much less worried about making sure he had "enough meat." (we probably eat two or three "meat meals" a week)

Creamy Tomato Penne with Asparagus

All this to say, if the idea that meat is necessary at every meal is what is keeping either you or your significant other from trying to go "less meat," even though you would like to for other reasons, then a little research should help the issue. And if it does not convince your significant other, there is always the "sneak in a vegetarian meal and don't mention the fact that it doesn't have meat and hope they don't notice" method! I used that method for a long time. If, however, you simply don't know where to start in preparing meals without meat, I have some tips to help you get started which I shall share in my next post (because this one is getting a little long).

Mommy Yoga: Retrieving Child Pose

Useful for: retrieving small magnetic letters from underneath the fridge, toys from under the sofa, and toddlers from under the bed.

Strengthens: resistance to fear of creepy crawlies under things while reaching blindly for toys, stretches back and spine

Method: kneeling in front of the piece of furniture that is housing the object of your desire, scrunch down as low to the ground as you can (gracefully, remember) and stretch your hand as far under the piece of furniture as you can possibly reach. Do not, I repeat, do. not. think about mice, cockroaches, or spiders. Stretch your hand (or, in the case of the refrigerator, fingers), back and forth in an attempt to locate object. Grasp object firmly. If retrieving toddler from under bed, grasp more firmly than you think you need to. Pull object out from under furniture. Attempt to uncurl into a standing position.

My toddler seems to find it infinitely amusing to push the little magnetic letters up under the fridge, and then suddenly develop an acute need to have them all out in front of him again. This pose can be combined with the handle of the broom in the case of a fridge that is too low for your arm to fit.

A whole new dimension of exercise is added when the item being retrieved is the toddler himself, as that particular object usually vigorously objects to being retrieved.

Diapers! - Tutorial

So I completely forgot how many diapers a newborn goes through. I borrowed newborn diapers from a friend when I had Theron, and I guess I didn't move him completely into my prefolds until he fit into both the infant size ones and the next size up -- because soon after Lula arrived, I realized that I had about half the amount of infant size diapers I needed.

But-- they are prefold (flat) diapers. Seriously, how hard can it be to make them? Answer: not hard at all! And I actually sincerely hate sewing. So, for any of you who actually enjoy sewing, super easy project.

First, I found material. I used a large sheet we got at the local second hand market (kind of like a flea market) that was a kind of flannelish material. In retrospect, this was not quite as absorbent as I might like, so next time I make diapers (and I'll probably end up making more in the next size up), I would use either a thicker, more absorbent material, or I would double up the material to make a thicker diaper. Just a heads up.

So here's how I made them, complete with awesome instruction sketches. I know, I'm an amazing artist. 

I used one of my store-bought infant-size prefold diapers as a pattern. I cut the sheet into strips that were as wide as my diapers were long (1), and then cut those strips into pieces that were 2 and 1/3 times the width of my diapers, so that I could double them over with the middle third overlapping for extra absorbency in the middle (2).

I then folded the diaper (3), with the middle third overlapping, folded that middle edge over to make a clean edge, and sewed right along the edge (4). Then, I sewed on the other side of that middle third, to make a strip down the middle that was three fabric pieces thick instead of two (5). Finally, I hemmed the edges (6).

That's it! How easy, right? I used sharpies to decorate them, and had quite a good time doing so. You could also sew a strip of pretty material down the outside of the middle, but I was oh-so-done with sewing. Have I mentioned that I hate to sew? This project was definitely a labor of love. And a strong desire to have enough diapers.

Here are some of my favorite sharpie designs:

Other family members got in on the fun, too.

Here are some of Grandma's:

And Daddy did one:

Even Big Brother participated!

After several washings, the gray and brown sharpies have definitely stayed the best, hardly showing any fading or smearing. The turquoise was by far the worst, most of it just washed right out. The other colors have faded a little, with the lighter and greener colors doing worse and the darker and reds/yellows doing better.

When I was taking pictures for this post, Lula was fast asleep, so I drafted Richey the... Giraffe? We've never decided exactly what animal he is supposed to be. But I drafted him to model a diaper.

In summary:
-Very easy project that even someone who hates sewing can complete in a couple hours.
-I would use a more absorbent cloth next time, or double the material.
-I would use only gray, brown, red, purple, and yellow sharpies next time to decorate. (or get fabric pens, if I lived in a place where I could get those)
-I now have enough diapers. It is wonderful.

Lula Anne.

Things I am thankful for:
-Lula's labor went a bit faster than Theron's. 1/10th the time, actually.
-Lula was not actually born in the car. We made it all the way to the delivery room.
-We are back home within 12 hours of labor starting.
-Good doctor with good hearing who lives across the road and can hear my husband yelling ERIN!!!! from our house. 

Things I have learned:
-3 hours is a REALLY FAST labor.
-Sometimes the absolute last words in the whole wide world that you want to hear are "DON'T PUSH YET!!!!"
-Sometimes you just don't notice all the potholes on the road between your house and the hospital. They just don't seem to matter.

Other observations:
Sometimes you find yourself not being quite as nice as you want to be being.
You think, in your head,
"The doctor and the nurse are nice people.
I like them.
They are doing the best things for me.
They know how this is supposed to work."
But then you watch and your hands just won't seem to stop pushing them away when they insist on stretching/pushing on/ "helping" things that you just feel in that moment very strongly would be better left quite alone.
You also for some reason feel like a good thing to inform them of would be the fact that "it hurts."
As if they don't know.
Sorry guys. You really are the best. =]

We are very thankful to be home and feeling good with a healthy baby and a very confused toddler.