[Food + Drink Wednesdays] Veggie Bake

The other night, my friend Aviva stopped by and I wanted to throw together a tasty homemade meal with little to no ingredients because I haven't been shopping in about two weeks. That and I was feeling a little under the weather and wanted something quick and easy. Thus was born my cheesy veggie bake.

Essentially, I dumped a package of defrosted frozen veg in a casserole dish, which included carrots, corn, green beans and peas. And then I moved onto the sauce:

I sauteed a few cloves of garlic in some olive oil. Once that was done, I threw in three tbsp of yogurt, two tbsp dijon mustard, some rough chopped basil and parsley, a sprinkle of lemon pepper, a half tsp of dried Italian seasoning, pepper and salt.

Then I threw that over the veggies and sprinkled generously with grated mozzarella and cheddar cheese.

Bake at 400 for 20 mins and enjoy the deliciousness.

Yum.

[Get Involved Tuesdays] To Eat or Not to Eat...

Meat. (Please excuse the rambling of these thoughts, but there are a lot of ideas going on here, lol)

Last night, my brother and I had Scott and Grant over for dinner and we had a lively discussion about what it means to be a vegetarian. We discussed the controversy of raising one's children vegetarian and if that takes away their freedom of choice, which then turned into a comparison to religious families and forbidding pork or beef in the household. This led Scott to question whether vegetarianism could be on the same level of religious or spiritual importance and left us all scratching our heads. (Any ideas on this?) And at this point, my mom said what she has always said, which is "Everything in Moderation."

Which is a great philosophy, but one that many Americans do not prescribe to. I referenced a lecture I saw of Jonathan Safran Foer. He said that since he wrote Eating Animals many people would approach him, lamenting the fact that vegetarianism was important but they could never commit fully to a vegetarian diet because of events such as Christmas dinner made by grandma that includes a succulent ham. Foer argued that for many there may be these significant occasions that can dissuade vegetarianism for that one day, but that one day does not eliminate the significance of making a conscious effort to eat more "green" on other days. I compared this to my fall off the vegetarian "bandwagon." I had traveled to another country and decided to try local dishes, many which contained meat. When I came back to LA, I began negotiating with myself, arguing that if I slipped up and had bacon for breakfast, then the whole day was shot and I could help myself to steak for dinner. These became wasted days that then became a habit and there went years of vegetarianism, because I had convinced myself that it was an all or nothing deal. But as Foer pointed out, abstaining from meat for just one day a week can make a difference. In addition, he discussed that in his own evaluation of meat-eating, he did not necessarily have those "events" that warranted the consequences of meat-eating, so why waste a meal?

In my own life, I feel the same way. I like not eating a lot of meat; in fact, too much meat, especially red meat, tends to make me lethargic and almost ill. There are times that I want to eat meat and these are few and far between. Perhaps once every couple of months, I'll really crave my mom's chicken curry or when I'm traveling, I'll have a desire to have real souvlaki. In those cases, eating meat and being conscious of my decision to eat meat proves much better for my health and the world's health.

I want to transition to a (mostly) vegetarian diet again, but this time, I don't want it to be an all or nothing process, where I end up putting so much pressure on myself, I feel deprived of something that I didn't really like in the first place. Instead, I want to look for sustainable/local/organic meat if I am really craving it and know that every day/meal that I refrain from eating meat makes a difference to the world, whereas meals that I eat mindlessly may end up doing a lot of harm.

What do you guys think? Is vegetarianism an all or nothing thing?

[Green Thursdays] Eating Animals

I was a vegetarian for a couple of years before two cute boys took me to Betty's Burgers and I had a juicy, juicy burger. And then later than day, one of them made me a steak. So now I'm a carnivore. Just kidding. I don't eat meat every day or even every other day. I usually have meat once or twice a week. I'm trying to get back to vegetarianism but dealing with the guilt whenever I reach for bacon has continually worn on me. However, I attended a lecture by Jonathan Safran Foer on his new book, "Eating Animals," and it made me much more comfortable with my choices. The fact is that, yes ideally, for the world, we would all be vegans. And the truth is that you can be happy, healthy and make easy choices when being vegan, despite the propaganda against such a life choice. But you can also help on a daily basis when you do eat meat. Cutting down meat consumption and being aware of where your meat comes from is an important first step and an easy one at that. And I shouldn't feel that if I have bacon for breakfast, that the rest of my day is shot and I can eat meat like a starving lion. Every choice is an individual one and keeping this in mind has made me an "ethical omnivore."

Check out Foer's book here.

"Like many others, Jonathan Safran Foer spent his teenage and college years oscillating between omnivore and vegetarian. But on the brink of fatherhood—facing the prospect of having to make dietary choices on a child’s behalf—his casual questioning took on an urgency. This quest ultimately required him to visit factory farms in the middle of the night, dissect the emotional ingredients of meals from his childhood, and probe some of his most primal instincts about right and wrong.

This book is what he found. Brilliantly synthesizing philosophy, literature, science, memoir, and his own detective work, Eating Animals explores the many stories we use to justify our eating habits—folklore and pop culture, family traditions and national myth, apparent facts and inherent fictions—and how such tales can lull us into a brutal forgetting.
Marked by Foer’s moral ferocity and unvarying generosity, as well as the humor and style that made his previous books, Everything Is Illuminated and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, widely loved, Foer’s latest tour de force informs and delights, challenging us to explore what is too often conveniently brushed aside. A celebration and a reckoning, Eating Animals is a story about the stories we’ve told—and the stories we now need to tell."