Bring On The Veggies!

I have been quite busy with my professional blog/website Vocalize (in French). But I have a new subject to talk about here:

I am going vegetarian, voilà, I said it!

I have never been a big meat eater and my meals were already including soja, soja milk, soja yogurts, tofu, tofu steaks, lots of nuts (almonds, walnuts, pine nuts, macadamia...), brown rice, whole weat pasta, cereals, vegetables and fruits.

But I grew up eating fine French food and that includes delicious stews, sausages... and I liked the taste of it a lot even if it was not on a daily basis.

So it took me a while (until now so quite a while lol) to reach that point when I can say I am going vegetarian. The trigger seems to be the animal killing I cannot bear to be a part of anymore. They don't show those awful videos on TV with the cows or pigs screaming like crazy...

It is like a new life starting now and a whole universe to discover. I will still eat dairy products for the moment, milk and eggs and maybe someday I will go vegan. My concern is to eat healthy and to avoid any lack (iron, proteins, D vitamin, calcium...) because last December my doctor said I was having anemia and prescribed iron tablets. And I would rather not have those tablets but eat healthy.

To celebrate the day, I had:

For lunch

• a fresh carrot and leek soup
• two cereals bread slices
• oatmeal with cinnamon and brown sugar

For dinner

• my first homemade dal with green lentils
• tender dried figs from the market
  

Here is the pic of my Dal With Green Lentils and Coconut Milk

1. Cook the green lentils (3 cups of water per 1 cup of lentils) for 25 min in cold water + add 1 tea spoon of baking soda
2. Diced 1 potato and 1 carrot and cook them (I microwaved them with water for 7 min)
   
3. Heat 2 table spoons olive oil in a skillet over medium heat, add 1 chopped onion, then 1 big tomato chopped bite-sized, 1 minced garlic clove. Add the potato and the carrot. Add spices (ras-el-hanout powder, fresh coriander).
4. Add the drained lentils to the mix, reduce heat and simmer for 10 min to blend flavors.
5. Pour some coconut milk and simmer for 2 min.

Et voilà, my non spicy Dal with Green Lentils, the pic is not as yummy as the taste of it :-)

A Butterfly Effect

When buying a steak in a plastic packaging, I often consider whether I should become a vegetarian or not. When I have it served on the plate, cooked, juicy, spiced and smelling good it is another story though. But seeing the red flesh makes me wonder...


First, it is an animal and it was killed because of me, the cow did not die from a natural death. Me, who cannot bear animal cruelty, how can I just forget and bury my head in the sand?


Then, it makes me think about leather. The shoes I wear like everybody else and I realize it comes from the same dead cow. Should I switch to non-leather shoes made of cotton, linen and often rubber for the soles? Rubber can be recycled but not always. Also, I've heard a vegetarian saying it was OK to wear leather because the animals were already dead and burning the skins would produce a massive amount of carbon dioxide but it is only an excuse, don't you think?


And the carbon dioxide leads to greenhouse gases and all the methane emitted by cows. "Do cows pollute as much as cars? Well, apparently they do!

Do you ask yourself the same questions? I want to do my best but it is so complicated sometimes. What if I started by reducing my meat consumption? Weakness or strength?

Aaaargh, enough questions for today, it is dinner time and I am having radishes.


Organic Shoes on Mahalo.com
How to Recycle rubber? on eHow.com
Do cows pollute as much as cars by Jacob Silverman on HowStuffWorks.com