Tonight’s dinner will mark 72 hours since I’ve had meat. Yes, I’m on a vegetarian diet. No special reason, really. It’s just something me and Mrs. Abyss decided to do. We’ve been vaguely uneasy about some types of food for some time, namely the process that brings beef to fast food restaurants. (More about that later.) And I’m planning to watch the movie Earthlings soon (narrated by Joaquin Phoenix) which is about how humans treat animals. Something tells me that is going to be a very important movie to see.
Saturday night we hit a local Mexican restaurant and I had the veggie burrito. Man, that thing was delicious. It had plenty of onions and green bell peppers, which I always love, plus beans and mushrooms. The flavors were the bomb.
Sunday was also vegetarian, I forget the specifics, but for dinner Mrs. Abyss made lentil soup with mushrooms. Oh man that was good. I had leftovers for lunch on Monday, again for dinner on Monday night, and for lunch again right now. It’s just that good.
Another good thing is we’re eating bread much more often. I’m really liking that. A loaf of nice crusty sourdough bread is hard to beat.
So far so good on the vegetarian thing. I don’t have the shakes or headaches or anything like that. We plan to go at least a week as an experiment, but I do know she wants turkey for Thanksgiving, so we’ll be off the wagon by then for sure.
Who knows what Christmas will bring this year? No Hickory Farms products, I guess. I’m thinking after Thanksgiving we might as well get back on it and try it a little longer. I’m wondering: What are some good dishes for a vegetarian Christmas? Sugarplums? 🙂
What about you? Are you carnivorous or vegetarian or even vegan? And whatever it is, what are your thoughts on this topic and how’s it working out for ya?
Shouts from the Abyss 
i’d love to go vegetarian, but darn why does bacon have to taste sooo good? argh!
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Oh yeah, bacon. The holy grail of meat. 🙂
Last night I had a veggie pasta dish and was asked, “soup or salad?”
“I’ll have the clam chowder.”
D’oh! I forgot. Gimmie the salad. That one hurt. 🙂
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You can still do Hickory Farms! I’ve never eaten their meat products, but man I love their cheese balls rolled in nuts.
OK … this is going the way of Oma’s pickle post. Gutter, meet my mind. 😉
I have some good veg-friendly recipes. Most are of the soup variety, but not all. Let me know if you’re interested and I can send along some of my favorites.
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Yo, yo, yo! Check this out! You did your thing, dawg. I forgot about the cheese balls! That sounds like something fun to make on my own, too. Thanks for the hot tip. You are on fire!
And yes please on the recipes. 🙂
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Here are links to some of my favorite veg-friendly recipes:
Potato gnocchi w/rosemary-butter sauce (http://punchitin.wordpress.com/2009/09/29/fear-of-pasta/)
Broccoli and roasted garlic soup (http://punchitin.wordpress.com/2009/09/16/another-fall-soup-recipe/)
Vegetarian tortilla soup (http://punchitin.wordpress.com/2009/09/09/obes-speech-and-a-new-recipe/)
Butternut bisque (http://punchitin.wordpress.com/2009/08/17/oh-martha/)
Oven-roasted chickpeas (http://punchitin.wordpress.com/2009/05/04/the-origin-of-the-chickpea/)
Curried cauliflower soup (http://punchitin.wordpress.com/2009/03/18/chocolate-chips-and-cauliflower/)
Fire-roasted channa masala (http://punchitin.wordpress.com/2009/05/11/weekend-recipe-update/)
Banana bread w/raspberry jam (http://punchitin.wordpress.com/2009/02/11/kittens-and-cupcakes/)
I’ve had a lot of success with recipes from 101 Cookbooks (www.101cookbooks.com) — Heidi Swanson is awesome. You also might check out Happy Herbivore (happyherbivore.com) and Post Punk Kitchen (www.theppk.com).
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My daughter and her boyfriend are vegetarians. When they lived in our town, it was tough to find vegetarian food beyond pasta and cheese pizza at restaurants, and this is a city with fabulous restaurants. We were on a circuit of the same restaurants that offered veggie burgers and some tufu items. I am mostly vegetarian and haven’t cooked meat in years, so I’ve picked up a lot of recipes.
Below is one of my recipes for quinoa. Quinoa is high in protein and complete nutritionally because it has all of the essential amino acids we need. I just bought a big bag of quinoa at Costco but some grocery stores sell it, too. You don’t need as much cheese (or any) as this recipe calls for.
http://blatherblog.wordpress.com/2009/08/22/quinoa-casserole/
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Thanks! We’re slowly learning the ropes of the local restaurants, too. We do try to not eat out that often so it’s going to be somewhat of a slow process. At this point we understand that a selection that simply has no meat in the description may not be the same as a true vegetarian dish. It may contain beef or chicken stock, lard, etc. When we go hardcore then we’ll worry about such things. 🙂
Thanks for all the recipes Kate and Catherine. I’m going to make them all!
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[…] of tonight it will be 11 days since I went vegetarian. Let us pause for a moment to lament this very unfortunate timing with Thanksgiving looming large […]
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