Simple Christmas idea #28 -- Have a meatless meal

Take a break from turkey...

As a cradle Catholic, I was raised with meatless meals on Friday as a sign of respect for the fact that Jesus died on Good Friday -- a form of penance. It's a long standing tradition in the Catholic world -- though it's never been much of a penance for people who like to eat fish. As a Catholic who is tired of the church's overemphasis on sin and guilt, I continue to observe meatless Fridays -- but for a few other reasons besides Good Friday.

For one, I'm finding it harder and harder to enjoy meat when I learn about factory farming and the living conditions in which animals are raised for our dinner tables. For two, the meat industry has had some pretty serious health scare issues in the last little while in the meat processing plants. And for three, I think the hormones and antibiotics in some kinds of meat in particular don't agree with me at all. I have had some pretty serious stomach cramps at three in the morning, the kind that make me wonder if maybe I should go to emergency. But most important of all, animals deserve our respect, and our planet does, too. The meat industry is one of the biggest polluters and destroyers of our environment, when you think about how many resources it takes to raise a pound of beef in comparison to a pound of vegetables.

Our meat consumption as a family has dropped fairly steadily over the last few years, and even more so since Christina has started cooking out of vegetarian cookbooks. So not only do we have meatless Fridays, but we're into other meatless days, too. It's good for us to try new things and eat lower on the food chain.

So today's Simple Christmas idea is to have a simpler meal that doesn't involve meat of any kind. Ours will likely consist of a soup I made from our garden produce and froze in the fall, homemade bread, canned tomatoes, and Christmas baking. Or maybe Christina will make us a tofu dish. Either way, we, the animals, and our planet all win.

#90/100 Simple Suggestions... Plan one vegetarian day a week

I'm not a vegetarian (yet), but wish I was. Even better, I'd like to be a vegan, but that means I'd have to take the time to learn a lot more about healthy veganism and how to meet nutritional needs without animal proteins. Take a cooking class or two. Learn how to use more herbs and spices and find sources for local vegan foods. It would require more time than I have at the moment, but it's something I aspire to someday.

Why? Because if I'm truly trying to live lightly, the fact is that the consumption of animal products uses too many of the earth's resources (if you tried one of those ecological footprint quizzes yesterday, you may have figured that out), a lot of them in the raising of food for the livestock, and feeding them until they reach an edible size. Plants, not so much, especially if we grow them ourselves or get them locally, which I try to do as much as possible. And veggies, done right, can be tastier than a chunk of beef anyday.

So today's suggestion is one that I would encourage even carnivores and omnivores to try. See if you can't have at least one day a week during which you eat more simply (read, without meat). We had that day yesterday. This is what I ate: for breakfast, toast with organic peanut butter, and crabapple jelly made by the boys next door (they're really nice, and so's their jelly). For lunch, a toasted cheese sandwich with homegrown tomatoes. And for supper,

 steaming hot and hearty beet borscht (our own beets, carrots and onions),

served with a dollop of sour cream,

yummy quinoa salad (with black beans and homegrown zukes and tomatoes),

and my daughter's whole wheat baking powder biscuits.

Simple, satisfying, delicious, and kinder to the earth and most animals

(with apologies to the cows who contributed the cheese and sour cream).

As my daughter often says in these days of plentiful garden harvest, it's no hardship to be a vegetarian. In fact, I prefer it. Actually, yesterday was my second vegetarian day this week!

P.S. If you want the recipes, I don't mind sharing these... 

P.S. Again: Looking for more Simple Suggestions? Try here.

Simple Suggestion #34... Reduce your intake of animal products

Do you know what this is?

Yup, the Canada food guide poster from about 1977. I might still have one somewhere, because I contracted type 1 diabetes a few years later when this poster was still in vogue. It's gone through various incarnations, but according to the food guide, no matter when you studied it, Canadian kids were supposed to eat plenty of dairy and meat products (they're at the top, see?), mainly because Health Canada was heavily lobbied by the meat and dairy boards of the time. There was a lot of emphasis on getting enough protein in our diets.

It's only since I've gotten hooked on Voluntary Simplicity that I've seriously questioned the whole animal products thing. No, maybe a little before that, as store-bought meat products began to disagree with me. These days I can hardly touch processed meats, and non-organically grown animal products keep me up at night. I suspect large scale feedlots and the chemical/medicinal substances used to maintain the health of livestock may have something to do with it. Then again, maybe it's those genetically modified organisms being fed to animals that are getting through and messing with my insides. It could be that I'm developing gall bladder issues as I age? I don't really know, and rather than go through tests, I've simply cut down on animal proteins.

What I do know is that, as a result of living more simply, I've been going out of my way to try a few more vegetarian recipes for the sake of our planet. I'm not exactly an animal rights person, though I feel more and more disgusted when I hear stories about the inhumane conditions in which some animals spend their entire lives. For me, it's more that raising animals requires a higher energy input than raising vegetables. Steers, pigs, chickens and a lot of other living things we eat need to be bred, born, innoculated, housed, fed, maintained, shipped, slaughtered, packaged, shipped again, and purchased before they get to my dinner table (and I've probably missed a few steps there), all of which takes incredible amounts of fossil fuels or electricity in a world that's creating far too many carbon emissions. It doesn't make the animals' lives pleasant, either. But all that my garden veggies require is sun and rain and a little elbow grease in the form of weeding, staking and harvesting, and I've gotten to the point where I prefer my garden vegetable soup to steak any day because of the aforementioned concerns about chemicals in my food chain, and unfair living conditions for other living beings. And there are plenty of plant protein sources. I could quite happily live on nuts and quinoa and beans and lentils and...

My best friend announced on Facebook one day that she was going to be a vegetarian, and she's stuck with it ever since. When I grow up, I want to be like her. I'm still a ways from vegetarianism, but I feel myself getting closer every day, as I find more delicious vegetarian recipes that my family and I enjoy. I'm guessing that in the past five years, we've cut our consumption of animal products 20% or more through deciding to eat meatless more often, and it hasn't been a hardship at all, even for my meat-and-potatoes-raised husband. We're growing more of our own veggies and preserving them for longer periods, and when we do cook meats, we stretch them further by cooking smaller portions with more vegetables. I know it's better for the planet, and I have no doubt that it's better for us, too.

So what's cooking at your house tonight?

P.S. Looking for more Simple Suggestions? Try here.