SunshineDay wrote:How great that you are still eating carrots from your garden!!! Do you have any secrets to share for growing them?
You may laugh, but I have been seeing a lot of Tik Toks about "chaos gardening" so this year I just tossed them in a garden box with a few pepper plants and a lot of marigold seeds and let them do their thing. Best carrot crop I've ever gotten. Also best chile crop. Hoping someday our young apple and apricot trees will produce. They're only a couple years old at this point, so fingers crossed.
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Did it take anyone else a lot of tries to finally go fully compliant? I am having a lot of starts and stops.
This morning, though, I was thinking about all the excuses I used to have for eating badly and realized none of them are true anymore. I have a job, so I have enough money to buy whatever food I need to buy, so I can't justify 49-cent ramen anymore. I have a husband who will cook and eat anything I want, as long as he can eat his hot dogs or whatever when he's in the mood (I never tell him what to eat), so I can't use roommates or my mom's reluctance to cook without oil as excuses. And I live in an area with a decent farmer's market, a good natural food store, and a big grocery with reasonable prices on veggies, beans, and grains. When I was young (I'm quite old now) I had to make my seitan from scratch, because the only store-bought near me was at the Adventist grocery and it was really expensive. Nowadays, just about any food I might want or need is at the Albertsons. No excuses!
So I went to the store with my husband and bought a ton of produce including lots of potatoes and sweet potatoes), some frozen oil-free potatoes, canned tomato products, soymilk (I may go back to making my own plant milks -- so much cheaper), and frozen veggies. My husband bought hot dogs and buns, lol.
On Sunday, we have a family dinner with our in-town family, and we rotate who gets to pick what I cook. I have been thinking about it, and I'm going to keep letting people pick. I like cooking for them and I don't want to alienate anyone, plus I don't really mind cooking meat and not eating it. But when it's my turn (there are 4 of us, so it's my turn every 4 weeks) I'm going to try to knock their socks off with compliant meals. Maybe as I start getting thinner and healthier, people in my family will start wanting to do what I'm doing -- that was the case long ago when my husband got on the bandwagon for a while because I was fixing my heart troubles with diet and exercise. Fingers crossed!
My plan for lunch is to eat some of the compliant chili my husband made for me last night that I wasn't in the mood for, over either potatoes or pasta, with a big salad. For dinner, I'm making a soy-free miso broth with noodles, mushrooms, kimchi, and bok choy. Both of those meals are things we both like. I will keep experimenting to find more, but here's a starter list of dinners we both like:
Vegan shepherd's pie (or sometimes just mashed potatoes and the gravy from that recipe, or the Well Your World mushroom gravy, which my husband likes more than I do)
Chili (he likes it more than I do) over potatoes or pasta
Ratatouille with potatoes
Kimchi soup with noodles or rice
Pasta with simple tomato sauce (he adds cheese; I never did even when I was eating meat)
Beans and rice (he especially likes it Louisiana-style with red beans and hot sauce; I never met a bean I didn't like)
Veggie sushi
Big salad -- sometimes I make a salad bar and include a couple items he wants but I don't (eggs, cheese, etc.) but I don't need to do that as he likes salad by itself, too, and doesn't complain if a few beans/seeds sneak in there.
Black bean enchiladas with green sauce and no cheese
Veggie soup, especially split pea or minestrone (the ones from one of the McDougall books -- super easy and comforting. We also love the
Andersen's Split Pea recipe)
Potato soup -- I used to make it for him with bacon or ham. Now I just add some smoked paprika
Bean burritos (he adds cheese and/or rice; I just do beans and salsa)
The tahini rotini from fatfreevegan -- he says it really tastes like it has parmesan in it
Mezze plate (hummus, baba ganoush, pita bread, maybe some olives or cucumber slices, tomatoes, etc.)
Sometimes we have BLTs and I just leave off the B. Maybe it sounds boring, but I love a plain tomato sandwich if the tomatoes are good.
Baked potatoes with a variety of toppings salad-bar style
If anyone reads this, I'd really love some suggestions for foods your omnivore family likes.
