Our week as vegetarians!

Over Spring break, I was bored Thursday afternoon and decided to check out a documentary on Netflix.  I watched half of a food documentary on myths about vitamins, processed foods, etc.  I forgot the title.  Interesting, but not that engaging.  I looked for another one and landed on Vegucate. Wow...interesting, startling, moving enough I decided to try it out...being a vegetarian that is!  Bailey was game too.  In fact he challenged me to see who would fall first!  Now, I knew going vegan was a bit too much for us...no dairy, eggs or fish, so vegetarian was a bit more realistic.  Let me start by saying, we already eat meat free two-three dinners a week anyway, so,this shouldn't be that difficult.

And it wasn't really...

John was game too.  By default the other kids were vegetarians this week too, although I think Jonas had a turkey sandwich for lunch Monday.  

The meals were a complete success.  John said I hit it out of the park with the new recipes!  

Tuna pot pie.

Salmon and potato cakes, recipe from Better Homes and Garden.

One pot tomato and pesto pasta.

On Wednesday, Bailey had a UIL competition, so we had Dominoes.
Veggie and cheese pizza of course!

Simple bean and cheese tacos with Guacamole.

I have to admit...these meals were delicious and easy.  But by Friday, Bailey and I were having a bit of tummy troubles.  Too much fiber I guess! :). 

Yesterday morning we called off the meat less challenge.  Bailey doesn't know it, but he ate meat first.  We had a great morning together just the two of us.  He had his high school orientation at Health Careers!  Yes...you heard me, high school orientation.  I have a child starting high school in less than 6 months!  We were both highly impressed with the school.  It's incredibly small and a very unique magnet school.  His freshman class will be small, the whole high school has less than 1,000 students.  It's like a private school environment?  A lot of the staff has been the 20+ years.  His new orchestra director has a Ph.D!  Her primary instrument...the viola!  We knew this was the perfect school for him.  After orientation, he had to get some labs draw and of course, we were in the medical center area so it was right around the corner.  We stopped at Starbucks after for a late morning treat.  Bailey was eyeing their breakfast sandwiches with meat.  He looked at me and said, "Are we still doing the meatless thing?"  I told him no...go ahead.  Enjoy the sandwich...you deserve it!  He said it was delicious, best breakfast sandwich he ever had! ;). I had a cheese Danish...so I still hadn't had any meat!  Last nights dinner finally broke my meatless streak...I had lasagna with meat sauce.  Although it would have been fine without it, it was a frozen Marie Calendars lasagna John had bought.  

I'm planning to keep up as many meatless meals as possible, but think I'm not going to ban it from my diet altogether.  Plus my growing boy needs the protein.  Him and I agreed we were hungry all week!

 

I also found an awesome app last week that helped me with recipes and the meal planning called Mom Meals 365...powered by Food on the Table.  I highly recommend it! (No they are not paying for this...I wish!!)  This app lets you create a schedule of meals, generates the grocery list from the recipes, let's you load your own recipes, searches the web for recipes and even has a database of recipes right there.  A neat feature I haven't tried is the "on hand recipe search", where you can list 4 ingredients in your fridge or pantry and it will search for recipes to match.  You can even search recipes by sale items, as it can link to your closest grocery store too!  Love it!  I'm looking forward to this weeks meals. 

Look good right!?

 

Have a great week friends...