What I Eat to Stay Healthy, as a Vegetarian

 (As I've mentioned before, I have been vegetarian since 1991.  I have never even once wavered from my choice.  I won't go into the reasons for my choice again, but they were ethical reasons, period.)  

But I am not a militant vegetarian in that I don't make any public show at all about not eating "dead animals."   I know that term is annoying to my family, who are the only ones who have to hear it, but it reflects how strongly I feel about not harming other sentient beings.   And most people don't even know that I or any of my family are vegetarians.  Also, I don't preach to others about whether they should or should not eat other beings.  And while my family are also vegetarian, they're not as strict as I am.  They eat fish, and I don't, but I don't preach to them about their choices. 

Off the subject, but "militant vegetarians" for whatever reason they're vegetarian really annoy me and make us "normal" ones look creepy to non-vegetarians.  Usually, they're people, too, who have not been vegetarian for long and who probably will not stay with the diet, for whatever reason.  There's no need to make a fuss about it. 

To be clear, I am vegetarian, not vegan, because I do eat my daughter's chickens' eggs from time to time.  They are pets, and they lay eggs, and sometime even eat their own eggs.  Her oldest girl, Paddy, turned 10 years this spring, and we have many more near her age.  I don't even like eggs, but I try to use them in cooking because I do have to work to get enough protein in my diet.  I don't feel guilty about eating these eggs under these circumstances.

Here's my rather simple daily food intake:  Breakfast:  Every morning I have a high-protein large dense muffin which I make from a very modified banana bread recipe I found years ago on a flour sack.  I use more than twice the eggs the recipe calls for, plus a very, very generous supply of nuts, usually walnuts, sometimes some chopped almonds as well.  In addition, around 2/3 of the flour I use is whole wheat, and I add almond and oat flours, too.  The tasty ingredients include chopped candied ginger, which I loooove,  and a small amount of dark chocolate.  Sometimes I also eat some raw almonds with my muffin.

Lunch:  I buy frozen broccoli, cauliflower, and carrots and use those, along with whatever veggies are ready in my small vegetable garden, which right now are mostly greens of various sorts.  Later in the season, I will mostly stop buying vegetables because my garden feeds not only me but my family as well.  

Okay, back to my lunch.  I cook all my various veggies and add some sort of protein (super-firm tofu is my favorite, but also I use many vegetarian/vegan protein products such as fungus-based proteins, which sound awful but are delicious.  I also rely strongly, when I can find them, on shelled soybeans.  Rarely, I'll steam an egg or two if I'm out of my usual proteins.   For a carbohydrate, I use Asian either rice or wheat noodles (rice noodles are my favorite) or cooked rice, which is even more of a favorite than the noodles.  I make around a pot of rice a week and keep it in the fridge.  It heats up very nicely in the microwave.  To all this mixture, I add various seasonings, again mostly Asian ones because they taste best to me.  Oh, and for a good fat, I absolutely love both olive and sesame oils.

Dinner:  Most of the time, a repeat of lunch.  I usually make enough lunch to be able to heat up the remainder for my dinner, to which I might add more vegetables if necessary.  

Snacks:  I love the old-fashioned peanut butter (which I grind myself at Winco), with either apple slices or celery -- and, yes, I add "ants" to my snacks in the form usually of dried cranberries.  I also snack on small handfuls of nuts throughout the day.  

It's a simple diet, but I enjoy it.  Sometimes with my family, we'll make sushi, theirs with fish, mine all veggies.  (If you're interested, by the way, we've made our own sushi for decades, and I would be happy to describe how we do it and what we use, and where we get the ingredients.  Drop a note if you're interested.)

Recently we all had "decorate your own" pizzas, which my daughter made the amazing crusts, and we chopped a large number of options to put on the crusts, which we then cooked on the outside grill.  

I've followed this same diet, by the way, again since 1991, and I'm extremely healthy and full of energy.

Sometime, I'll talk about how we celebrate Thanksgiving with, of course, a totally vegetarian dinner.  It's delicious!