Eat Your Veggies

Growing up, my parents both worked and my dad was in charge of dinners. Me and my Brother would get home from school and either play outside or watch TV until dinnertime. My dad would get home at 4:30 and immediately start t dinner every night. He always made sure it was ready and on the table by 5:30 when my mom got home. I have to say it was almost never nutritious, but bless his heart he made sure we ate together every night.
One night we would have kraft macaroni and cheese (thats it), another night it would be Chef Boy R Dee spaghetti out of a box. the next night it would be polska kielbasa with green peppers onions and yellow saffron rice. I don't remember what the other nights were but there wasn't alot of variety. I can remember anytime something unusual showed up me and my brother weren't very appreciative of the variation from routine. And every Friday night we went out to the Cafeteria for dinner.
Needless to say when I went to college I gained a bit of weight, my metabolism wasn't working for me anymore and I was clueless about nutrition, I didn't know how bad that huge slice of chocolate cake was for me or all that soda I was drinking, I never had to really think about it before. But when my dad mentioned I was gaining weight - well I hadn't even noticed. That shocked the bejeezus out of me, how do you put on 20 lbs and not know it. That is when I started learning. I got that weight off (not the healthy way), but it stayed off until pregnancy. I had learned that I needed to watch my portion sizes and exercise. It was fun watching the pounds go, and not too difficult (I had the help of xenadrine at the time too - man that stuff worked and gave me energy to boot!)
I have tried to go meatless many times, but always sunk back to my old processed food and meat ways.
My reasons for going meatless was simply I felt that my habits were using meat as a main course and the veggies come secondary. This always felt backwards.
Now I am at a place where it makes sense to me that if I want maximum energy I need the food most closely associated with the sun's energy. That is plants. why do I really want my energy from a middle man - the animal who consumes the plant when I can just go to the source.
I may still take a bite of the animal stuff I make for my family, but never more than a bite to see if I cooked it good and animal protein is still good for you, just not in large quantities.

I have stores and stores of energy now, I feel amazing almost like I did when I was taking xenadrine - only this is purely natural!

Going back to my childhood eating habits, I have never tried more than a handful of veggies, there are over 30,000 edible plants out there, and I have tried maybe 30.

It is my goal to try a new veggie (or edible plant) each week if I can.

I am gonna make a list of my dislikes here - because there are some plants I just can't stand.....

celery
turnip
brussel sprouts
coconut (its the texture)
radish

and I recently tried parsnip (the jury is still out on that one)

I have recently made and eaten artichoke and love it!
and I have recently started eating raw broccoli - its good I am really getting used to it raw

I am eating alot more raw foods, again I feel like I am getting untainted energy as close from the sun as possible. and I feel wonderful for it.