Recovering Vegetarian

I stopped eating meat during my senior year of college. It was a long time coming really; I've never enjoyed seafood, and I have memories of dousing steak in A1 just to get it down. Thanksgiving turkey always tasted too dry. Ham and bacon were (and are) still delicious, and chicken was a great base for almost any meal, but I was at the beginning of my plunge into well-sourced foods, and I didn't have the money to shell out for happy, healthy meats. So I decided to try it for my last semester of college.

I really can't tell you what I ate that semester, I'm fairly certain I had yet to discover my love for all things garbanzo beans, but my exploration into vegetarianism went well enough that I stuck with it after that.

For the next few years I ate strictly vegetarian, still for the purpose of saving money. My stance was, and has always been, the following:

Animals were created for us to care for- to respect, treat kindly, and see them as part of God's creation. They were created for us to use in our day-to-day lives as well- for companionship and work, as well as to nourish us. From their first day of life to their last breath, we need to respect these creatures and care for them in a way that shows that.

With that little manifesto, I continued to choose to not eat meat, while being understanding of the choices of others. Somewhere along the line my choice turned more into an ethical decision rather than purely financial- I just didn't have the heart for a while to think about all the details of meat. I even attempted eating vegan for a short bit, though that attempt did not last too long because cheese.

Over my years of vegetarianism, I have gone farther and farther down the rabbit hole of what healthy eating really and truly means to me. These days, and probably forever more, healthy eating means consuming real, whole food, free from insecticides, free from preservatives, free from unnatural alterations. It also means avoiding refined sugar (aside from the occasional dark chocolate bar or ice cream or muffin because who wants to live without those??) (oh also I love pizza, any pizza, and don't often turn it down) and being mindful of my natural sugar intake. I also do my best to avoid soy products and most corn products (aside from my favorite tortilla chips.)

When you eat like that ^ you basically avoid allllllll of the center aisles and freezer section of the grocery store. Most tomato sauce has sugar and canola oil in it. My favorite salsa had "natural flavors" in it, which is code for many nasty ingredients that aren't actually natural. Pre-packaged foods are made with so many things I can't even pronounce.

And so, homemade everything. It's been a process (I ate the last jar of my favorite salsa only a few weeks ago), but bit by bit over the past few years, and continuing on into the future, I've made subtle changes to my diet and lifestyle (and because I do all the cooking, Jer and Harrison's diets too), and it's just become a way of life.

Going farther and farther down the rabbit hole, I came across the Weston A. Price Foundation and found that I agreed with so many things they had to say about diet (how could you not when they promote all the butter?!)

My diet, and my family's diet, is far from WAP guidelines, but learning about them has helped me take a step in their direction. And they are All About Meat. Well sourced meat, to be more specific, as that is where you can find so many essential vitamins and nutrients that your body needs to thrive.

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Being in charge of the nutrition of a tiny little being's is no easy task when you are as picky as I am prone to be. Harrison still breastfeeds (and often, these days, as we are in a bit of a transition and it is his comforting place), and he is getting great nutrition from my milk. But he is ever growing and at 14 months old I don't want his diet to consist of just breast milk and garbanzo beans. Additionally, Jer and I began realizing that he (Jer) wasn't functioning as well as he could or should be, and we attributed it to the lack of animal protein in his diet. So over the past few months, change has been in the air in the Kozeluh household. It's all been revving up to last Sunday, when we started a new routine that we intend to keep until it no longer works for us- we bought a whole chicken at the Farmers Market. We talked to the farmer, we looked at pictures of his ranch in Northern California, and we bought a chicken that was raised happy.

Hah. You guys, I went from cooking only vegetarian to looking at this fully intact fresh chicken on my kitchen counter. (Well let's be real we did buy a few chicken breasts from the grocery store over the past few months as well, but they are far less intimidating than a WHOLE CHICKEN.)

But intimidation be damned- Jeremy bought me an Instant Pot last month! It's really a good thing too, because who wants to turn the oven on when it's 85 degrees and you don't have an air conditioner? (Ugh and well the oven still does get turned on. Every Saturday morning. To bake sourdough bread. Which is important.)

So for the past two Sundays, we've gotten a chicken from the Farmers Market, covered it in salt and pepper and herbs. put it in the Instant Pot with some water and onion and carrots and garlic, cooked it for 35 minutes, carved it, put all the inedibles back in the pot with more water and parsley and salt and apple cider vinegar, and then cooked that for two hours. Voila- chicken for the week and for the freezer, and bone broth to last until the next Sunday!

Let's be honest here, I still haven't brought myself to actually eat the chicken (though I DID cook lentils in the broth and ate them). But Jeremy and Harrison are both now starting their days with a nourishing cup of bone broth, and fully enjoying chicken with their lunches. (And I have been adding gelatin to my green smoothies, so there's another step in that direction.)

When I prepare the chicken, each time I have thanked it for its life, and for the nourishment that it is going to bring to us. (Laugh all you want, I don't mind.) I think it's important for Harrison to understand what his food is and where it comes from, vegetables and meats alike, and I want him to not take any of it for granted.

So our household is slowly changing, again. Just another baby step on our path to what feels best for us to be happy and healthy, nourished and thriving.