Wednesday, August 27, 2008

Real World Wednesday

Meatless Mondays

A few of the magazines that I read with some regularity have been touting the concept of meatless monday. The Meatless Monday website promotes the concept of choosing one day a week when you refrain from eating meat on purpose, not just because you happened to gobble down only things containing pasta, cheese and peanut butter (though not necessarily all together).

In other words, it only counts if you're doing this for a purpose.

The Meatless Monday site mentions that this is a "national health campaign to help Americans prevent heart disease, stroke, diabetes, and cancer - four of the leading causes of death in America." My friendly magazines inform me that this campaign also helps out with that whole "green" thing. The raising, slaughtering (that word alone is almost enough to make me turn entirely vegetarian) and transporting meat animals expends a great deal of our natural resources. If people around meat-crazed North America (I'm talking to you, Denny's Beer Pub) band together and refrain from meat every Monday, well, hey, we may just add a couple of decades to the life of our planet.

And just think how much energy we'll save during Lent, and we super-fancy Catholics are going meatless TWICE a week.

Here are a couple environmentally friendly (I hope) ideas to help you start out your meatless monday routine (I'm not guaranteeing these are waistline friendly).

Salmon and Leek Quiche (I'm not opening up the debate about why fish is not considered meat...just go with me on this one).

Vegetarian Chili

Cornbread(because what is chili without cornbread?)

And for you truly adventurous and brave chefs out there, how about your very own, homemade Falafel

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I'd be very impressed by anyone who can make falafel at home! And I'd hope they'd invite me...