I'm going vegetarian

For nearly a year, now, I've slowly been liking meat a little less.

It all started when I first moved here and was put in charge of cooking, because I hadn't found a job yet. Because it was cheap, we ate chicken thighs 3 or 4 times a week. As time went on, finding the giant arteries in the thighs really started to bother me. So I'd cut them out while I trimmed the fat and skin off my thighs. The times when I didn't were the worst. The arteries would fill up with black blood, explode and the surrounding meat would taste like blood. I stopped opting for thighs after that and we started buying breasts. Then the last time I tried a wing, I picked out a big, delicious one from the wings Mike prepared, sat down to eat. Then I flipped it over and saw a blood bubble nearly the size of a fucking dime on the back of the wing. I lost my appetite. After that day, I decided I didn't want to cook chicken for myself anymore. I still cook it for Mike, because it's his absolute favorite food in the world.

So after that, I still ate chicken at every restaurant I went to and when Mike's dad barbecues every weekend in the summer, but the taste of chicken started appealing to me less and less.

Then, at the beginning of this year, I was rinsing and separating wings for Mike's dinner and one of the little wings flapped. I thought about the living chicken that wing came from, and the videos I've seen of slaughterhouses and decided I didn't want to eat chicken anymore.

Admittedly, I'm really bad at this, though. We still go to chick fil a once or twice a month and I can't pass up Popeye's when we find one. But I opt for the marinated, thin chicken patties from CFA, where I mostly taste the bun and barbecue sauce, and while I do get a chicken wrap from Popeye's, I make my main meal popcorn shrimp. Mike's mom seems pretty upset about my not eating chicken, because I already don't eat beef, so she has no idea what to cook for us when we come over for dinner. I told her to invite us anyway, Mike can't get enough chicken and I don't want to limit family visiting time just because I don't want the meat dish. That leaves more calories to spare on extra garlic bread, anyway! ;)

I have a friend who had to go vegetarian because of health reasons, and she and I went to Exotic Thai, because I wanted an excuse to check out the Davenport one (not as good as the Moline one, even though it's the original) and they have a lot of tasty vegetarian options. I tried the veggie chicken in my pumpkin curry and was really surprised and pleased. She made me try a mushroom and the taste wasn't really that bad! The texture really bothered me, though.

I suppose my main reason for going vegetarian is because I don't eat enough fruits and veggies. Funny, right? So if I make my main food source fruits and veg, and not meat and carbs, maybe I'll start feeling more energetic.

Originally, I was planning on just doing it for the summer, to see if I like it. But I think I'll make it indefinitely. I'll technically be a flexetarian, anyway, because I'm still not going to pass up some Popeye's and I already miss bison burgers. It's actually going to increase our fast food options because since I started counting calories, I cut out most of the fast food places we used to eat at due to the caloric and sodium levels of their foods. But if I start getting salads without the added chicken, we can start going to burger king and hardees again. That is, if they offer salads.

Aside from bison and bacon, I don't think I'll miss meat. When I'm running low on protein, I crave peanuts.

I have two vegetarian cookbooks and one vegan one, I have the basic formula for what my daily intake of fruits, veggies, beans, carbs and dairy is like, I have an optimistic attitude and a supportive boyfriend. Now all I need is money to buy vegetables. Ugh.