Scribblings from the human vegetarian.

I want there to be no misconceptions: I am not some food guru, health nut, gourmet chef, or any other silly notion of that sort. I'm just someone beginning (again) to work my way towards altering my eating habits towards more healthy options. I may not be a lone vegetarian in a family of meat-eaters (my MIL and SIL are both vegetarians) although I often feel as if I'm the weirdo in the family because of my choice.

I really don't like cooking for myself at all, perhaps I don't feel like I'm worth it, although DH would tell me differently. I think that's one thing I find very difficult, I've been married 8 1/2 years, 3 years ago I became vegetarian, Hubby is deathly allergic to onions & any peppers (and most related foods with some tiny exceptions), and very much a meat fiend. Last year we found out my Hubby is type 2 diabetic. I have done some personal research into the Blood Type Diet and found that I mostly agree with it. For those who know what it means, Hubby is a type O, and I'm a type A (who grew up with a mother and 3 type O siblings), further complicating the issue. For those who don't know, in short Hubby has a predisposition as a meat eater and my body functions better on a purely vegetarian diet.

Hubby has said that he would be a vegetarian except that we know for a fact that when he doesn’t eat meat he gets very lethargic and has difficulty functioning. Even at that, there hardly seems to be many vegetarian foods that don’t contain onions, black pepper, white pepper, bell peppers, fresh/whole tomatoes, eggplant, paprika, chili powder, etc. all of which trigger his allergy and his throat swells shut. There are a few exceptions like ketchup, tomato sauce, and the juice from mild salsa (I still don’t understand how he can eat that other than he does it in very small amounts).

Me on the other hand, I don’t want to eat dead animals, although I like veggie ‘meat’ alternatives (compared to my MIL who doesn’t even like the taste of meat), I'm allergic to pineapple, have a relatively low tolerance for greasy foods/too much oil, I like dairy but more than just a little of it will put me in a lot of pain so I try to limit my intake (mostly it’s dairy fat that’s the worst, I can have fat free milk without much notice). Hubby has been commenting recently on how sensitive my stomach is, I can’t eat a lot of overly spicy foods, vinegar even if its in mustard or ketchup), onion or bell peppers (these need to be eaten with some form of bread, rice, or light yogurt), baking soda, all of this as well as salt give me very bad stomach aches. I don’t drink pop very much because even the carbonation feels like it’s burning my throat!

Despite what the current trend is (on the Net at least), I'm not attempting to be a martyr for vegetarianism, only to spout how perfect I am in everything I consume. If I could do that I’d be a complete vegan. I'm human, I don’t eat perfectly, and god forbid I even eat marshmallows on occasion! I simply do my best, some days I fail miserably, and often feel miserable because of it, but at least I'm trying.

Perhaps this is just a silly attempt (yet again) to connect in my own way with the world at large, maybe find some encouragement, but if nothing else hopefully it will help me track back to being a healthier vegetarian.