At any rate, as eating seems to be something we absolutely have to do every day, there's nothing left to do but just keep trying to improve what we eat. So we're making small changes around our household- some radical, some not so much.
Neither my husband nor I are quite ready to make the grand leap to vegetarian (let alone vegan). However, after several great conversations with some vegetarian and vegan friends and 3 trips to India, he is much more willing to concede that the meat industry consumes an inordinate amount of resources, especially when compared to what is used by other countries. So our commitment right now is simply to eat LESS meat. To this end, I have scoured a few vegetarian cookbooks as well as consulted with my good friend Joy (author of www.veganjoy.blogspot.com and the upcoming cookbook "Eat. Live. Thrive. Recipes from Everyday to Exotic") about how to make sure that we continue to get the necessary protein in our meatless meals.
As I have talked with vegans, who, generally speaking, are more concerned with the treatment of animals in any industry, the diary industry actually seems to be a less-humane industry than even the meat industry. I have to admit that at this point, I am selfishly more concerned about depriving myself of much-loved cheese and yogurt than I am about the conditions of diary farms. Ignorance is everything, I suppose. I'm too afraid to watch all the recent documentaries that expose the meat and diary industries in this country. Having said all of that, though, I have made the commitment to again consume LESS animal-derived diary products than before. I have switched my kids to soy milk, which they love. And I want to be sure that I am not replacing meat in my vegetarian dishes with more cheese because nutritionally speaking, it would be a bad move.
So our recipes this week look like this:
Tonight: orange-teriyaki chicken with brown rice & roasted bell peppers/onions
Sunday: shrimp stir-fry using leftover ingredients from above plus a sweet & spicy sauce
Monday: herb-crusted island pork tenderloin with roasted cauliflower and yucatecan corn
Tuesday: spinach lasagna (made in a huge batch to freeze) (vegetarian)
Wednesday: ratatouille (vegetarian)
Thursday: leftover lasagna
Friday: James' birthday choice- chicken crescents & pecan pie (healthy ideals thrown out)
Saturday: grilled pizza (probably BBQ sauce, caramelized onions & bleu cheese, maybe with sausage-flavored seitan crumbled on top)
Sunday: grilled salmon and asparagus
A couple of other recipes I'll be making this week for our lunches include whole wheat pasta with a basic tomato sauce and sausage-flavored seitan and a wheat berry salad with an orange-vinaigrette dressing.
-For the sake of the health of these kiddos...
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