Vegetarian April

April is proving to be quite the month for new experiences. I posted recently about Kitzzy and I going candlelight-only for a month and this week we decided to go vegetarian for the month as well.

How did this decision get made? Well we've been talking about trying this for sometime now so the idea of doing it wasn't too much of a surprise. Secondly, I recently watched Food, Inc. and I started to wonder how the meat we buy has made its way to our table. I know I've been eating this same meat for a long time, but to see the conditions needed to provide a large country with enough meat to feed everyone, animal factories make meat look much less appetizing.

I'm not opposed to meat, but I've tried to buy meat that's free-range and sustainable and have spent much more than I care to on it. So instead of spending a fortune on meat, this is a great opportunity to learn how to fulfill my dietary needs during a busy training season with no meat.

Somehow this managed to coincide with me being the chef for the month so I'm getting to learn some really good vegetarian recipes.  The first one I made was just a tofu stir fry. This was lacking in flavor and in general was just poorly executed. I'm not a big fan of tofu, mostly because of the texture.

The second meal I made was a vegetarian shepherd's pie that replaced the meat with a lentil and pearl barley mixture. This came out fantastic! I was blown away by how tasty this was and encouraged that I could make a protein-rich vegetarian meal without tofu.

My third meal was a vegetarian meatloaf that used lentils and quick oats instead of meat. This was good, but not as good as the shepherd's pie. I think it just needed some extra spices.

Well I'm looking forward to the rest of the month and learning to cook some great new food. This should be a lot of fun and who knows, maybe we'll keep this up for longer than the month.