For the last three weeks, I’ve been a vegetarian.
Why?
-Because I didn’t know how actual vegetarians do it
-I’m a kooky, fun kind of gal.
It’s actually been a pretty fun, eye-opening experience.
The first week was probably the toughest. Nay, the first DAY. I was hungry, it was lunch time, and usually on a Monday I would whip up some ground turkey and vegetables in a romaine wrap. In my meal prep, I picked recipes off pinterest that looked AMAZING: butternut squash lasanga, sesame cauliflower, sweet potato hotcakes… I had all the ingredients.
Little did I know those all took HOURS to make. Add that to the fact that I am a n00b in the kitchen, I would be eating lunch for dinner.
So that day, I ended up having the wrap, as usual but with a chopped up veggie burger instead of the ground turkey.
Over the next few days, I made some of my chosen recipes, but not all of them. There just wasn’t any time to spend hours in the kitchen. I also realized that a lot of the recipes required a lot of carbs and cheeses. Since I only get two yellows (carbs) a day, it was hard to choose when I would eat which tasty dish. And I only get ONE blue a day (cheese/fats) so I also had to be conscious of that as well. I knew that if I didn’t want to be wandering around my kitchen like a hippie at Burning Man looking for food, I’d have to come up with a different plan.
I started making more things with quinoa. It started with quinoa-stuffed peppers, which were pretty good. Then a facebook friend of mine posted a recipe for Warm Kale and Quinoa Salad and that was amazing. I also bought more veggie burgers, just in time for grilling season, and fish. I already eat a lot of fish in my life, so not much had changed there.
The biggest struggles for me was the urge to snack, and that’s mostly because things got more social as the weather warmed up. I spent a day on a friend’s boat and everyone was nomming on chips and big sandwiches. I brought my Shakeology, but I didn’t want to waste it all at once (Or have to excuse myself to the lower deck to reieve myself 5 times… #shakeoprobz). I was extremely lucky that my boyfriend decided to snoop through the cooler and found some grapes.
We also went to a wedding, and that was tough as well. It wasn’t just tough because of the vegetarian fix… it was more tough because the food there was just everything. I would have struggled with this on ANY version of the fix. For one, the cocktail hour had a zillion food stations. My crew had scored a table RIGHT next to the fried calamari station. I’m all about that fried calamari. Since we were in the back of the room, no one even saw that station behind us. I could have been eating ALL of the fried calamari.
There was a lot of fried food at most of the stations, and some with just meat. Fail and fail for me. But there were stations with fruit and cheese, salad, lox and grilled shrimp. So don’t worry, I had a food plate of DELICIOUS food in the end. But it was tough for me to be drinking lemon water and hearing around me, “The margaritas are AMAZING.” Le sigh.
Since this was my second round of the fix, I’d already been off alcohol for over a month...and I’ve ALWAYS had basically no alcoholic tolerance to speak of. So when the time came for toasts and I sipped my glass of champagne, I got googley-eyed pretty darn fast. I guess it’s a good thing I couldn’t get my grubby mits on those margs!
If you’re looking to get into meatlessness, here are some things I’d highly recommend you keep around:
-Veggie Burgers. Quick to make, and really good!
-Quinoa. There are so many different ways to make it and, like rice, they have other flavors available
-Snapea Crisps… not that you can’t eat potato chips as a vegetarian, but these are better for you and just as addicting. Good for those snack days
-So much fruit… it’s summer and so many great things are in season
-Kale and Spinach: both give you abs and both are amazing when cooked with garlic powder. But isn’t everything?
-Shrimp/fresh fish: I recommend sword fish if you love steak.
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