My Vegetarian Diet

So I promised to talk about this while I was doing it, but I'm not anymore. Oops. However! I will talk about it now. I decided to do various diets on a whim, and I started on vegetarian because it was the least radical leap into the diets. Actually, pescetarian would've been, but I never buy fish and I want to go meat free first. I've learned a few things about myself over the course of this month.

1. I used eggs A LOT. 
2. Somehow the majority of my meals had spaghetti sauce. I apologize to my roommates for turning the tupperware and plastic bowls orange. 
3. I love eggplant. However, I am sick of it right now because I've got nothing but eggplant parmigiana in my fridge. That was not eight servings. It's more like ten. This segways into #4.
4. I need to start halving recipes because I get really tired of leftovers after a few days. 
5. I really like almond milk.

Although I could still drink milk, I decided to buy a half gallon of regular milk and a half gallon of a substitute for the sake of finding a substitute I liked when I go vegan for a month. At first it was soymilk. Soy milk tastes really odd, so after I finished that, I vowed never to get it again. I bought almond milk at Nate's suggestion and found I really loved that. So I'll be drinking almond milk more! 

Being vegetarian actually got me to read Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer. If you would much rather not know what your meat goes through, I would not recommend this book. However, I would recommend this book to everyone. It's not a case for becoming vegetarian. Foer simply puts forward what goes on in the meat industry and leaves it up to the reader to decide. It is a personal journey. 

Time for a recipe I made towards the tail end of the month! It's spaghetti. I noticed I ended up eating a lot of spaghetti or macaroni and some recipes called for half of the box. I had half a box of spaghetti, half a box of macaroni, and a lot of random vegetables. That weekend, I got the urge to go exploring. I went into Trader Joe's and bought some tofurky sausage links and a jar of spaghetti sauce. 

What resulted was some pretty delicious spaghetti. You can throw in whatever vegetables you want! It's pretty good for leftovers.

Leftover Spaghetti

Ingredients

• One broccoli crowns
• 1/2 portobello mushrooms
• 1/2 red peppers
• 1/2 medium onion
• Handful of spinach
• Favorite spaghetti sauce 
• One box of spaghetti (I think mine was approximately 12oz or 16 oz, I'm not too sure)
• Cinnamon
• Two tofurkey sausages
• 1 tablespoon of oil

Directions

1. Cook noodles according to directions on box. When there are five minutes left of cooking time, put chopped broccoli in. Drain and put back into pot.

2. Cut up all the vegetables. Dice mushrooms, pepper, and onion. Cut tofurkey into 1/2 inch balls. 

3. Cook tofurkey through. Put the tofurkey into a bowl. Put oil into pan and saute peppers and onions until onions are slightly translucent. Add mushrooms and cook for another two minutes.

4. Put all the vegetables into the pot. Empty jar of spaghetti sauce and put a dash of cinnamon into the pot, then stir it until it's just about evenly distributed. Put on cover and cook for ten minutes, or until heated through.

5. Take pot off of stove and serve!

You may want to put in more spaghetti sauce, depending on your tastes. I found it tasted just fine with the amount of spaghetti sauce I used. Experiment! That's what everything is about.