Vegetarian

I am actually not a vegetarian.  I do enjoy many vegetarian meals, but I am certainly never giving up meat. My favorite is steak.  I could eat a well cooked steak every day.  Alas, financial circumstances have left me with no way to purchase steak.  Even chicken is more expensive now so I don't even eat too much of that. So mostly we eat turkey burger.  Well, my children do.

Unfortunately, most lower income people are fat because of the food they can afford to buy.  Hamburger Helper, lots of pasta and rice; these are easy and inexpensive meals. Right after I went back to work (I got laid of from a rather high paying job and now work for less that 1/3 of my former salary) we could barely afford to buy food for the two week pay period.  We ate very unhealthy food.  So I tried to compensate by eating smaller portions.  That worked for a bit, but the food was still very unhealthy.  I couldn't buy any fresh veggies.  It was almost 6 months before I was able to taste a fresh tomato.

Recently, my daughter wanted to try vegetarianism and I wanted to help her so I tried with her.  I already loved a great many vegetable dishes and routinely ate soy burgers and veggie burgers.  So, it wasn't too hard for me.  I started by substituting vegetables in things like spaghetti sauce.  Broccoli and zucchini pretty much go well in everything.Then I began to look for other things.  Unfortunately, processed food helps a little. There is a lot of sodium in it, but it works ok for me right now.  I bought boxes and boxes of rice a roni. Yes, rice a roni.  Right before it would finish cooking I'd add as many vegetables as I could find in the house.  I also cooked it with tofu.  Tofu is the perfect diet helper food when you don't get your protein from meat.

So, we started just eating a lot of rice with vegetables and it was very good, very filling.  Then I started trying a lot of other new things.  My favorite so far has been spaghetti squash.  I think I've mentioned how much I love spaghetti? Spaghetti squash is the best thing I've tasted and it is so low calorie.  I feel like I can pig out on spaghetti again.  It tastes really good and I recommend you try it.  There are about 5 million YouTube videos on how to make it so I won't waste time on it here.  I make it and add my spaghetti sauce and it is amazing.

This week I start at the gym.  I haven't been to a gym in years but I need to start getting some muscle and doing some toning.  I'll give you a rundown in my next blog.

See you next time!