30 Days, then Boom! (Or Gobble)

I went for a month without meat, from October 25 to November 25th.

I started out with vigor. I gathered all my vegetarian cookbooks and magazines, went shopping for a pile of organic vegetarian foods, planned menus filled with yummy vegetarian dishes, and made several delectable dishes. But somewhere into the second week, I was wishing Jack in the Box served Ultimate Cheeseburgers with Veggie Patties. I determined I just didn’t have the energy to cook for two hours after work every night whipping up vegetarian haute cuisine.

I backslid to my bad habits of eating, only making minor adjustments. Like calling Dominoes and ordering cheese pizza instead of pepperoni, or eating blueberry muffins and chocolate cake for snacks because they were meat free. I realized how seriously pathetic my attempts at giving up meat were when I made biscuits and gravy using veggie sausage crumbles.

Not really the same as changing my lifestyle now is it?

I didn’t run out of ideas, but I did run out of energy. It seems that in order to change my eating habits, I will have to change everything; first and foremost my general laziness. You can’t really be a lazy vegetarian.

There are things to wash and peel and chop. No one is going to hand me a bag of freshly scrubbed and chopped veggies from a drive thru window. I have to work at this, and think about it daily until it becomes second nature to me. That might take awhile.

On November 26th, Thanksgiving Day, I ate a mound of turkey. Back to square one.