Produce WINS!

Let me just throw something out there: I love meat. Meat, meat, meat, meat, MEAT! Seriously, nothing quite hits the spot like a juicy t-bone grilled with garlic and drizzled with delicious thyme oil. OH man. The only problem with meat is, no matter how much you love it, no matter how much time you put into your relationship with it, it just won't love you back. It's just not so good for you.

In 7th grade, I attempted vegetarianism. I was going strong for two weeks, loving my soy chicken nuggets, my red beans and brown rice, and totally digging the salads...until my parents wanted steak for dinner. If you've ever seen Finding Nemo (and let's face it, who hasn't?) just picture me as the shark when Dory gets a bloody nose. All I could think about was that tender, grilled-to-perfection steak sitting so deliciously on a plate less than a foot away. To put it delicately, my new vegetarian lifestyle was over.

Anyway. Living in America, where beef is practically the national food, I find myself frequently falling into a "meat rut". When I think about what to make for dinner, it's always, "Okay. We had steak on Sunday, salmon on Monday, and chicken on Tuesday. We could have pork tonight. Or we could have fish again, but maybe that's too soon." Why does it rarely cross my mind to go all veggie? I'm proud to say, last night I broke the cycle.

As I mentioned a few posts ago, my roommates and I are rolling in produce. It's everywhere. We have so much fruit and veggies in our fridge that we decided to skip grocery shopping this week (which means we saved $40! YAY!). That also means that our fridge is now meatless, as I used the pork roast I had on Monday. So I put all of my brain power into coming up with this:

Let me introduce you to vegetable curry (which isn't technically a curry, seeing as there was no curry to be found in my apartment). Tender butternut squash, carrots, and a small bit of red chile (my roommates aren't so big on spicy food. Which saddens me greatly, but we won't go into that), simmered in unfiltered apple juice, and seasoned with cinnamon, ginger, salt, pepper, and deliciously sweet notes of vanilla. We put it over brown rice and had salad on the side... TO DIE FOR!

I have never had a vegetable be so delicious. I mean, I love veggies with all of my heart and jump at the chance to eat them grilled, steamed, broiled, raw, you name it. But this was unlike anything I had ever had before. I almost want to be a vegetarian again....almost.