Going Veg--It Ain't Easy

Try as I might, I cannot get the hang of this vegetarian thing. I know people do this everyday with ease and, in fact, just had a conversation about this with a college friend who said multiple times, "being a vegetarian is pretty easy, really." And that is possibly true if the factors that make my conversion so confounding are not present--namely, still having meat eaters to feed every night, disliking in the extreme most of the meat substitutes I have found and maintaining an attempt to limit carbohydrates, too, so that I don't become the world's fattest vegetarian. There is also the little problem of still liking the taste of meat--the only reason I'm eliminating it is because if you do any research at all, you find that factory farming is plain and simple just another phrase for animal torture.

I looked into humanely raised and slaughtered meat and it's a great option for anyone who is able to pay 2-3 times as much for their meat as they would for factory farmed meat. That's not an option for me. So back to square one: dealing with vegetables. I am not a great cook and I am not a foodie. I did start out liking to cook. But, for me, the fun went out the exhaust fan when it became my job to feed people other than myself on a daily basis. The restrictions of catering to everybody's likes and dislikes are incredibly tedious. It leaves very little room for creativity when regardless of what you decide to make, you are faced with somebody's disappointment. Except occasionally when entertaining, I seldom delight in cooking anymore. Out of necessity, I became a competent and fairly healthy cook. I can consistently put a tasty, decent and balanced meal on the table in an hour or less. But, all of my repertoire is either meat-based or involves pasta. Take those staples away and I got nothing.

At the heart of my problem is the mindset that it should be quick and easy. As a result of not enjoying making dinner, I've compartmentalized it to the point where I can't readily conceive of it taking more than an hour. Anything beyond that is too much trouble and an expansion of a chore I already dislike. In my mind, I liken it to rediscovering how to do laundry by hand--uh, no thanks! Whether it is or it isn't, I regard it as a lot of trouble to take a bunch of fresh beets and trim, peel, cook and prepare them. Draining an eggplant for however long it takes is a recipe deal-killer. This is what I have to change. I have to find some way to rediscover what is fun about cooking. Time is sometimes a consideration in my life, but not always. It doesn't necessarily need to be quick. Right now, I look at any time spent cooking as time away from things I like to do. Can I learn to like it again? I don't know. But I've got to try. I can't go back to meat; I can't eat veggie burgers all the time (I hate them). At least for now, I have to cook meat for the boy (the mayor's game for anything, but likes his meat, too). But I also have to find vegetarian recipes that are healthy and delicious and tack them on to my regular cooking. I have to learn to feed myself again after all these years of eating whatever is easiest and receives the fewest complaints. Let me go get that eggplant out of the vegetable bin. I'll drain it and see what happens.