A New Veg-inning
When you’re a kid, you have all kinds of ideas about what you’ll do when you grow up. For some kids, maybe it’s being a vet, or a firefighter, or maybe even a princess. When I was little, my dream was to write a book that reviewed every single hot dog restaurant in the Chicago-land area. Trips to Superdawg still make me swoon, and of the four apartments I’ve had since I lived in Chicago, each has been within walking distance of a good hot dog joint. The guys at Flub-a-Dub-Chub’s have gotten used to my standard order of a 2 flubby special with ketchup (I know, I know – the cardinal sin of hot dog culture in Chicago), even taking my photo once for their “Wall of Shame” as punishment for the aforementioned ketchup. To me, a Chicago without hot dogs is like…well, I don’t know what that would be like, and I’m not sure that it’s a world I’d want to live in.
However, as part of my general New Year’s resolution to get healthier, and to be more conscious of what I eat, I’ve decided to do something that I never thought I could do: give up hot dogs for 33 days. And not just hot dogs – all meat. No more burgers from Kuma’s Corner, no more bacon and eggs, no more turkey sandwiches, no more fun!
The thing is, I totally respect and understand the reasons why folks don’t eat meat, or any animal byproducts, for that matter. I just really like burgers and hot dogs, and so I’m challenging myself to think outside the bun – portobello mushrooms, seitan, tempeh…good thing I work at Whole Foods!
I’ll be keeping this blog updated about my latest adventures in Veggie-land – feel free to leave me any tips on how to deal with meat withdrawal, or any good recipes! I do have to say that, fears of tofu aside, I am pretty excited to start paying more attention to what I eat, and where my food comes from.
Wish me luck! Here’s to 33 meatless days!
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to 33 meatless days!i hope you will be successful. i am a 53 year old grandmother and boy do i appreciate your blog.while watching oprah,on march 11th or the 10th. the actress alecia silverstone discuss how & why she became a vegan,she has aso published a cook book. so that night i decided to try on the vegan life – style for health reasons. almost a week into it i am suprisingly doing well.i have lots of whole grains, beans, fruits, and veggies.i see good results in my body. i just need to check and see if having headaches is part of an adjusting of my body internaly, i hope thats all it is. any advice form someone would be very much appreciated.(body/n need of chang).
Good luck with your attempt to go meatless for 33 days. I was myself a vegetarian (I ate cheese though, not a vegan) for 20 years, but in recent years I have gone back to meat, but eaten only free-range chickens and grass-fed animals. The rise of environmental, ecological, understanding is causing difficulties for vegetarianism at the moment. You should read Lierre Keith’s The Myth of Vegetarianism in this vein (and she was a vegan too). Today we know that bad health for us and our planet is the result of not meat itself but the industrial processes in raising either factory farmed animals OR industrially grown crops (including the soy and brown rice that vegetarians love to eat that have led thousands of species to go extinct since they are based on monoculture). Don’t forget that eating chickens and cows (as long as they are not industrially processed) promotes topsoil! We understand today that what we need today is to produce food that is not processed and also that encourages a return to nature’s biodiversity (which is tricky – likely this will mean undoing the bulk of our industrial and corporate structures). It is complicated so be wary of one-answer fixes!