Vegetarian Cooking = Unhappy Husband

So... we had our first vegetarian day today. Well, we did have some meat with dinner, which is about as vegetarian as I can get hubby at this point in time. Not that I want to give up meat - I love meat - especially pork. MMM, pork. Yum. Anyway... We had kidney beans in a mexican type sauce - a take off of Tex Mex that LHT loves but he was pretty horrified that I wasn't putting meat into it but ate it just the same, on toast with avocado. I know he would have preferred meat but we are trying to be healthy. We had lavash bread pizza with pumpkin, olives and feta for lunch. Very nice. The Pixie Girl had pumpkin and couscous for dinner. She laughed a lot at the word couscous.

My brother and his gf have sent me some veg cookbooks - they eat veg. The dishes look so good and so I am planning a shopping list to try a few things out. I have been reading them in the car today and ignorning LHT so he is really getting worried about his meat intake. He looks positively pale when I say that there is not going to be meat with dinner tonight. Ah, to be quite honest, it makes me laugh. His pain is my pleasure - always has been, always will be. That's what I love about our marriage. The other thing I love about him is that no matter what I put down in front of him he always eats it and enjoys it. Therefore, whilst he complains and whinges he also acknowledges the health benefits of eating more vegies and legumes and stuff like that. It's not like I'm not going to give him meat, but telling him I'm not is funny to watch. One mention of it is enough to send him off to the freezer to defrost a steak and cook it up - medium rare. Not me, no blood or I just can't do it. After the steak he might get out a roast and pop that in the oven whilst he cooks up a few snags to munch on in the meantime, quickly making a ham sandwich as the snags sizzle away, grabbing a slice of salami as he makes the sandwich. Yes, we do have a lot of meat in our fridge. We are meat people, I was raised on meat, and deep fried food. A lot of it, and salt. A lot of meat, oil and salt... no wonder I struggle with nutrition now! As a child I have been served deep fried kabana - with salt for breakfast. My husband kills himself laughing at this but I had no idea that's not what other people were having for breakfast on Saturday mornings. Even as I think about it I must admit I could still go a bit.

I had deep fried cheese once, in a pack from the fish and chip shop. And I don't mean Camembert, which is delicious I might add, I mean cheddar covered in bread crumbs. It was like eating a heart attack. Even I couldn't do it. I have been working very hard to make much smarter food choices, no more deep fried cheese or kabana for me! One Christmas LHT and I both got given deep friers. We are definately foodies, we love to eat but we have to train our taste buds to love fresh delicious yummy food. Having a vegetarian in the family has definately helped in that regard, the indian gf has been teaching us to love vegies. I love zuchinni now!