Last week, thinking I might encourage my vegetarian daughter to explore options other than black bean tacos for meals, I decided to try eating only vegetarian fare for the week. I’d been inspired by a book I picked up at the library which not only promoted the vegetarian diet, but offered day-by-day meal plans COMPLETE with shopping lists. I’ll do just about anything in exchange for not having to plan my own trip to the grocery store.
I presented the veggie plan to the rest of the family as an adventure. (I also offered to make them meat on the side if they decided it was necessary, so they complied fairly readily.) Not only would we be trying something a bit healthier, from the looks of the names of the dishes on the list, we’d be trying flavors and seasonings exotic to our particular palates. Early on, my vegetarian daughter suggested that we review the recipes and pick and choose those that sounded best to us.
I said, “Why go to the trouble when they already label the shopping lists for day 1, day 2, day 3…. Let’s just be adventurous. Let’s just dive right in and really try something new!”
Day One found us eating tomato/basil salad (yum) and some kind of pasta with olives and fennel and a couple of items I couldn’t find in the store, so I ended up leaving them out (not so yum).
On Day Two we tried out a salad of miscellaneous greens which would have been good if I had stuck to a standard, favorite salad dressing of Ranch or Blue Cheese. We had minestrone soup, which was bland, but I salvaged it later with a little additional seasoning of my own.
On Day Three, I was three-quarters of the way through a toasted roast beef sandwich before I remembered I’d given up meat for the week.
Somewhere in there we ate a goat cheese and sun dried tomato pizza. Everyone declared this the best meal of all, but I was the only one who would touch the leftovers.
By Day Four, everyone else had gone back to their usual fare and my vegetarian daughter was instructing ME on the best methods for making black bean tacos. She’s right. Those black beans are quite tasty, no matter how you cook them.
2 comments:
Sounds like a great book. I'm getting really stuck these days on what seems to be the same old 3-4 dishes. I really like the grocery list idea as well. Between working long hours and not planning ahead we have been eating more than our fair share of meat-containing takeout lately.
By the way - I usually read this via RSS and so was surprised when I came here to see the really nice redesign. It looks wonderful.
Day three was too funny! generally speaking most recipes need to *at least* double the garlic recommended to taste good! Black bean burritos are my favorite.
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