Foodie Booty, A Life of Conscious Consumption

I was lucky enough to be raised by health-oriented people; my parents both are very much into staying active and eating healthy. I really attribute my parent’s exotic pallets, and therefore mine, to my grandma and grandfather, my mother’s parents. My grandfather was ahead of his time with his ideas about organic clean eating and living a non-consumeristic lifestyle, and raised my mom with those ideals. My grandma came over from Korea shortly after her and my grandfather were married there and with her she brought a lifetime of exotic eats, an amazing cook, whom later started her own award winning restaurant. I was raised eating a salad with my dinner every night, and fruit with my breakfast every morning, no red meat, only turkey and chicken, and absolutely limited amounts of processed foods. 

I have been a vegetarian now for just about seven years and I’ve loved almost every minute of it. I decided to do it when I was about 14, on this save the world kick, as well as weighted with all of the middle school self consciousness of a hormonal girl of my age. One of my best friends had recently gone vegetarian and encouraged me to do the same, that I would feel way better, be able to keep weight off, and save the world at the same time. The first few months were the hardest, but my mom helped me experiment with new options and substitutes, and now here I am, with an extensive repertoire of meals, and appreciation for new foods I had previously never tried before. I see myself keeping this lifestyle for the rest of my life, and passing it on to my children, because it really is an amazing way to stay healthy, and just a little thing we can do to make the world a better, more humane place.

It can sometimes be hard to come up with ideas for meals, but in reality many meals you have been eating before you went vegetarian, you can continue eating with the meats substituted out with alternatives such as beans, texturized vegetable protein (TVP), cauliflower, eggs, tempeh, tofu, and all veggie products you can find in the vegetarian section of the freezer aisle at your local supermarket. I have had a bad experience with eating too much soy when I first became a vegetarian that involved hormone imbalance, plus soy is super processed, so it is the alternative I use the least. I prefer cauliflower, TVP, beans, eggs, and veggie frozen products when I am too busy for anything else. Here are a few good websites I have found that have had some delicious vegetarian recipes to get you started:

http://www.thekitchn.com/beautiful-beans-15-delicious-r-142106

http://spoonuniversity.com/cook/make-5-dinners-for-under-25-only-using-ingredients-from-trader-joes/

http://www.buzzfeed.com/spoonuniversity/i-hate-salad?utm_term=.bcdbykOl4#.bwQZgozVa

http://www.yummly.com/