The Metamorphosis

I grew up in the South. When you sit down to eat, something has died. It's just the the way of it. We are some meat and potato loving people. In our household growing up, my parents would usually have one vegetarian meal a year that consisted of fried squash, fried okra, and corn on the cob. It would piss my carnivorous brother off and he would go to the fridge and grab either some leftover meat or lunch meat and eat that with his dinner. It wasn't my favorite until many years later. I'd give my left arm to have that meal in front of me right this very second.

When I got married, Christropher was a vegetarian following a bout of kidney stones. It didn't last long because he was the cook and he got tired of preparing multiple meals (an event that I think only occurred a handful of times, mind you). Anyway, we continued our meat loving ways for years. In 2007 (ish), I read and watched Fast Food Nation and Super Size Me. I was horrified by both and went off McDonald's for a good solid month. Fast Food Nation did more than get me off fast food for a month though, it laid the groundwork for this. I also weighed 180lbs give or take (and I'm 5'4").

I've wanted to watch Food, Inc. for a long time, but I've been really busy in grad school for the last year and I just had not gotten around to it. A few weeks ago, I bought the book at Borders and I read part of the 1st interview with Eric Schlosser, who also wrote Fast Food Nation. I've also been watching Food Revolution with Jamie Oliver and I'm horrified over how we feed our kids, but I'll get to that in time. Last weekend, I was laying around the house because we've had nothing but rain for weeks and I finally figured out how to watch Netflix movies on the Wii. Food, Inc. was one of the free movies and I watched it in absolute disgust.

I'm in the middle of making a lot of life changes right now. Three years ago, I moved to Hawaii. I lost 55lbs and pretty much eliminated all fried food from my diet. I am currently in grad school for my MSW. I'm in the process of getting a divorce (although we still live together and get along really well these days). I'm moving into another phase of my life. I won't go on and on about how gross the movies were and the books I've read that have lead to this point. You all know that it's out there and if you want the details, educate yourself. This blog is going to be about my personal transformation from Southern Girl Carnivore to Vegetarian. I plan to post recipes with pictures and discuss the process. I want to talk about healthy food practices, Eve's (my daughter) responses to our food choices and life style transformation, provide recipe feedback and ease of preparation, product reviews, and overall changes in my body and how I feel.

I planned our next two week's worth of dinners this morning with Christropher's help. We've decided that fish is still ok. I'm sure it's actually not as ok as I think it is and I know some about the overfishing and such, but none of the movies and books I've seen have discussed the gross factor in fish eating just yet. It's not processed, so I feel like what I'm eating is pretty pure in that regard. I am pleased that out of the 13 meals we planned, only 5 have fish.

Stay tuned for updates, feel free to comment and offer recipe ideas, and I hope you enjoy reading about the journey!