Monday, February 22, 2010

Veggies are good for you




But to start:
Fondant.

My sister-in-law, Devany, does AMAZING things with cakes. Like, straight up beautiful things. I am not a cake-er. At least not to degree she is. SO, I thought I might like trying a fondant I learned to do at a recent Relief Society gathering. It was fun, messy, and ultimately productive- which means it worked beautifully.
But my camera didn't.

See the pictures?

And I think we can all agree that I need a cake pedestal.

But enough about cake (don't you want some now?)

Veggies!

I know, great segue.

So, this month we've been vegetarian- almost. We still eat eggs, milk, cheese... you know, things that don't involve killing. FYI, eating eggs doesn't involve killing because the eggs aren't fertilized yet- so nothing TO kill.

I gotta tell ya'- I don't miss meat.
Let me repeat that:
I. Do Not. Miss. Meat.

Part of this experiment was to actually see if I COULD cook veggie for a whole month. Part of this was to see if I could loose some weight just my eliminating meat. Part was seeing if I could actually FEEL a difference in my body by just eating veggies.

I know this hasn't been a month yet- but I can answer at least one of my experimental questions:

YES, I can actually FEEL a difference. And it feels great. Let me es-plain. No, there is too much. Let me sum up.

You know that "heavy" feeling when you're done with a meaty meal. Kinda sleepy-like? "let out the old belt a couple of notches" feeling?

Gone.
really gone.

And the sleepy feeling is gone too. After eating a great veggie meal, I feel refreshed. Energized.

And it's opened my eating eyes to new foods.

Capers, for one. Oh. Man. My favorite way to incorporate these babies is to make a simple pasta fresca:
Pasta (your choice)
Fresh tomatoes
Olive Oil
Parmesan
Capers.

Make the Pasta. Chop the tomatoes. Drain pasta. Add about 1T Olive Oil, parmesan and tomatoes. Toss to coat. Top with 1T capers.
Delish. Fast. Easy. And a perfect blend of flavor. The capers add that dimension so often lacking in pasta. Try it. You'll LOVE it.

But enough about capers.

The point of this ramble (it's late for me and 8:50pm.) is to tell you that I'm seriously thinking on expanding this trend into the immediate future. Not that I won't eat SOME kinds of meat- I'm thinking becoming a pescatarian (fish and veg only) sounds pretty good. But the red meat is out of my heart -until it's time for me to make my AMAZING pulled-pork again:)

Why not try it yourself? See what you think?

7 comments:

Devany said...

Good job on the vegitarianism. Did you know I was vegitarian for 3 years? Thay ended on my mission. You just cannot NOT eat meat in the south.

Holly said...

I'm glad you've discovered capers. =) They are awesome.

Taylor said...

Pretty much all of the reasons you cited are the reasons why I continued to do the vegetarian thing...unfortunately the reason I started was to impress a girl :)

Kierst said...

First of all, the cake looks fabulous! And so yummy! Good for you on the whole veg thing. I told Taylor that as soon as we run out of meat, I'm not buying more. I really don't miss red meat much. Sometimes I want a burger, but Boca Burgers were looking mighty tasty the other day. But I've been off red meat since Taylor came into my life. At least mostly.

Taylor said...

Oh yeah...

I don't know if you remember this, but I used to remind Erika and Simone that since eggs were unfertilized that meant that they were really just chicken menstrual periods! Yum! :)

Laura McBride said...

Lol Taylor- I will never forget you telling them that! We still share that tidbit with people now!

Charlotte said...

Just had to add a little something... moderation in all things is a smart idea! =) I was a vegetarian for about 5 years until I had Savannah. I was so sick, they did a lot of bloodwork and found I was lacking in almost everything! I was trying to be so careful to make sure I had enough iron and such... but it just wasn't enough. Some of my favorite recipes are still vegetarian ones- but again, moderation!