Elizabeth's conversion, apostacy, and attempts to come back to the fold

Okay, enough with the religious metaphors.

I grew up in Texas and New Mexico--meat country! We were meat eaters--at least the rest of my family liked meaty things--ham, bacon, sausage, hamburgers, and such. My parents were/are both educators so we didn't have lots of money growing up, and my mom didn't buy lots of fancy stuff. We ate, in my memory at least, the same 5 or 6 meals for dinner.

I never liked anything porcine, and abhorred steak. I didn't do much cooking as a teenager. I don't recollect ever really touching meat. When I went to BYU, I don't know what I ate the first few months. I know I had never heard of scrod before the Y--and never since, come to think of it. I had a lot of intestinal distress that first semester. Looking back on it now, it was probably more nerves than anything. Sometime during that first semester I met a girl who was from the Bay area and she was a vegetarian, and had been for several years.

I don't think it had ever occurred to me to not eat meat, but when the concept was presented, it just made good sense religiously, economically, environmentally, and physically; and from that time, until I was 31, I was a vegetarian (ovo-lacto--I tried vegan for about a year, but it was too hard). I had a boyfriend who was Indian, and a devout/orthodox vegetarian, so that worked out well. We were together for about 4 years so I learned to cook a lot of vegetarian food. I was completely happy in my vegetarian life. There used to be a place in Provo called Govinda's and I ate there weekly. And Bombay House, too. I miss those days. :)

Every now and then, very, very rarely, I'd get a craving for meat, and I'd skulk myself to a good burger joint and get something to go, and eat flesh on some back road where I hopefully wouldn't be 'caught'. I met my husband as a veg and he married me as a veg. He'd dated other social work hippie types so he was used to vegetarians, and Portland is chock full of them.

When I was 31 we got pregnant. It hadn't occurred to me to not continue vegetarianism. But then I started reading all those What to Expect/What to Eat books and I got nervous. I worried I would be hurting our baby by not getting enough protein.

So, I bought some boneless, skinless chicken breasts. I honestly had never bought raw flesh before this. I read in my Better Homes and Gardens cookbook what to do. But I was so worried that I would under-cook them and get some dread disease, that basically I made chicken jerky. It was soo dry. I laugh thinking about it because I'm still pretty neurotic. Whenever I eat really juicy chicken and think it is so much better than my typical results....it's sad, really--I get scared I'm going to be salmonella-ized. I've never cooked a roast. I have bought one whole chicken in my life--it's probably cheaper to go that route than buying boneless/skinless.

Ever since, we eat meat a few times a week. A 2.5-3 lb bag of frozen chicken breasts lasts easily a week. Tonight I made spaghetti sauce with turkey sausage. My husband is just happy I feed him so he doesn't fuss about meat or no meat. But he prefers to have meat than go back to vegetarian all the time. My older daughter acts like I'm depriving her if there isn't meat in dinner, but my 5 year old prefers the vegetarian stuff. I don't ever buy anything made from pigs. If I had money I'd go back to organic dairy/eggs/flesh.

I'd like my goal to be making my meat go even further. I think that would be more harmony-inducing than going 100% meat-free. I could just go back to not eating meat myself, but that is a pain. But, as I'm thinking aloud (so to speak), I could just not eat the meat in the dish, giving it to the carnivores... which could make the meat go a little further?? Hmmm.....

Right now, my goal is also to try to lower my grocery bill by about $10 a week.

So, that's me, and how I'm connected to the blog.