So, I'd be lying if I said that I didn't like meat, I really would.  But, I don't eat very much of it.  (Butter, on the other hand, is an entirely different story, and I have been known to eat it plain, as in- straight from the butter dish.  That's another story for another time).  I'd say that I eat some sort of meat or fish about 3-4 nights a week.  And that's of a limited variety.
 
I used to be a pretty big fan of pork, wholeheartedly agreeing with Emeril when he referred to bacon grease as "liquid love". Since the chemo/cancer/recovery thing, I've learned that I don't digest pork very well. It makes me sick. My mom, aka Nurse Extraordinaire, thinks it may have something to do with my gallbladder not functioning as well and therefore not producing bile as it should to help me digest fats. Whatever it is, I was getting sick after even the leanest cuts of pork, such as tenderloin. So, I stopped eating it. This is pretty recent- as in the last two months or so. It was making me sick for a while, but I had to really pay attention to pinpoint what it was that was making me sick, (when I say "sick", think nausea, vomiting, severe indigestion and sour stomach, etc).
 
It's a little tough right now avoiding pork, because Hubby's a big fan of ribs and we've already fixed them several times this summer. And, since I was such a big fan of North Carolina's most famous food- pulled pork barbecue- Hubby bought us a smoker last summer, and would smoke Boston Butts for me all day long on Saturdays. Well, he'd do it for himself, too, but the fact that he would give me all the super-smoky, crispy parts was one of the most romantic things that he's ever done for me. I do miss the pork, but it'll pass. 
 
I have acid reflux disease- diagnosed with an upper GI barium scan about 2 months before the cancer diagnosis last year, and was on Nexium for more than a year. (Incidentally, the upper GI scan was a HOOT, since I was deep in the throes of my first bout of cancer-induced chicken pox, but didn't know it yet, and therefore covered with spots. I also didn't realize that I had to be naked except for my underwear under the flimsy hospital gown I was given to wear during the scan, and flashed the hapless Air Force radiology technicians my underwear more than once, while turning all different directions on the imaging table. To make matters worse, the underwear that I wore that day was a thong from Vickie's Secret with the words, "Wish you were here" written across the front. So, the poor guys saw not only my underwear, but my pasty-white, chicken-pocked bum. Such is the story of my life.)
 
Well, my Nexium prescription ran out, and I was taking Zantac over-the-counter since it is a heck of a lot cheaper than Nexium. I forgot it a couple of nights and didn't really pay attention to the fact that I was forgetting to take it, until I found the half-full Zantac bottle under the dresser in our bedroom when I was dusting the bottom of it. I quickly realized 2 things: 1) I hadn't had any heartburn/indigestion since I stopped eating pork products, and 2) I should really dust the bedroom furniture more often. That was at the beginning of April, and I've tried pork a few times to be sure, (a miniscule half-bite at a time), and THAT is enough to give me indigestion. Other than that, I haven't had any heartburn since then, and I'm not taking the Zantac at all. Weird, huh?
 
I haven't eaten red meat since I was 14.  I just don't digest it very well- I get really, really sick, and being sick makes me cranky, and I don't like being cranky, so I don't eat it.  It was hard at first, especially when the entire rest of my family was chowing down on steaks and hamburgers, but I gradually lost my taste for it.  I don't crave it any more.  Even when I cook it for my husband, (who I'm sure could take down a live steer if he was hungry enough), which is also about 3-4 nights a week, I'm never tempted to nibble on it, even though I make a seriously kick-ass pot roast, complete with roasted garlic, baby carrots, fingerling potatoes, red wine, and onions.  (I throw all the veggies in just for me!)
 
It was hard too, back then, because there weren't as many meat alternatives as there are now.  I'm a pretty big fan of Boca burgers and Gardenburgers these days, but they used to be kind of cardboard-y.  I use lots of organic ground turkey breast now, which was practically non-existent more than a decade ago, unless you ground your own.  And my maternal grandmother totally didn't get it. She didn't understand that I was just ok eating side dishes when we sat down for large family meals. She kept telling me that I would waste away. (The really humorous part is that, at the time, I was really overweight and could probably have depended on the fat stores in just one of my hefty thighs to get me through the winter. I really was NOT in any danger of wasting away.)
 
Once, when my mother had left out a jar of plain marinara sauce for me when the rest of the family was having spaghetti sauce that was already prepared, Granny just dumped the whole thing into the meat sauce. Being a hormonal, teenager-type person, I screeched something like, "What?!? My Paul Newman's Venetian Marinara's in the spaghetti sauce? Why? Why do you hate me?!? If GOD had wanted there to be beef in tomato sauce, he'd have cows spring up inside the tomatoes instead of cow uteruses! It is a SACRILEGE!" 
 
That ought to give you some idea of what I was like to live with as a hormonal, teenager-type person. I'm better now, but only because the hormones are pharmaceutically-balanced. (Mostly.)   Needless to say that didn't go over really well with Granny, and I learned to just fix stuff for myself for our big, family suppers. The funny part is, even when I go home now, some people still forget, and I haven't eaten red meat in over 12 years.
 
Here's a tip: if you haven't tried ground turkey in place of ground beef, you are really missing out.  You can use it in any recipe that calls for ground beef: meatballs, spaghetti sauce, tacos/burritos, burgers,
meatloaf, lasagne, etc.  It readily takes on the flavor of whatever seasoning that you're adding, and if you're using regular ground turkey (which is about 7% fat) or ground turkey breast (about 1% fat), there's no fat to drain off after you brown the meat, so you're saving yourself a bit of time and hassle in the kitchen.  And it's really, really good.  Hubby, Lifetime Consumer of Beef, practically inhales my turkey spaghetti sauce, and he doesn't even like turkey. 
 
It kind of makes sense if you think about it though- ground meat doesn't really taste like a piece of whole meat.  Ground turkey doesn't taste like a slice of turkey breast at Thanksgiving, the same way that lean ground sirloin doesn't taste like an actual piece of sirloin.  And another tip, if you are going to try it, use common sense in choosing what type to use: obviously, something that's 99% fat-free, like turkey breast, isn't going to stay as moist for burgers as 93% fat fee ground turkey does.  I usually save the really low fat stuff for tacos or spaghetti sauce or lasagne- wet foods that have a sauce so the meat doesn't dry out. 
 
Ditto for soy crumbles- they're fairly awesome in lasagne. I once made a pan for my birthday when a bunch of family members were coming up to Granny's to have Sunday dinner with us. There was a meatless lasagne with just cheese and marinara and veggies, and a "meat" lasagne with soy crumbles that had been browned with Italian seasonings. I ate the veggie one so the family would stay in the dark about the situation (because, obviously, if I was eating the meat one, then they would have known that it wasn't really "meat"), and they slurped down the entire pan, remarking how good it was. Compliments to the chef of the soy crumble lasagne from the people who consistently chided me for eating turkey burgers instead of regular beef hamburgers. 
 
If I am craving turkey burgers and all I have is ground turkey breast, I'll add an egg, some breadcrumbs, and a splash of milk along with my seasonings to help keep the burgers moist and hold them together.  Sometimes, I'll make a compound butter and stick pats of it in the center of the burgers, or stuff them with cheese to keep them moist as well.  A few weeks ago, I made some chipotle turkey burgers stuffed with pepperjack cheese that were so good I could have died happy right then.  (And they were super-easy, too.  Check out the Archer Farms burger seasonings at your local Target, my personal mecca of commerce.  They've got a bunch of flavors like chipotle, ranch, etc.  They sell a little box for $2.39, and each box has 2 packets- each packet seasons 1 pound of meat.  Look for them in the aisle with the ketchup, mustard, steak sauces, and marinades.)
 
So, there's my little testimonial about ground turkey.  Try it.  Don't tell your family and they won't know.
 
That was a complete side road that I didn't really mean to wander down.  In fact, I've now been typing so long that I have to take Delilah the Laptop into the kitchen with me so that I can wrangle up some supper for myself.  (And in case you're wondering what I'm having for supper tonight since it's Meatless Monday, I'll tell you; bronze-cut, imported Italian rigatoni with organic marinara sauce, cracked black pepper, and parmigiano reggiano.  It's like my grown-up version of Spaghetti-Os.)
 
The whole point of writing this blog was to entice you all to join me with celebrating Meatless Mondays!  In its own words, (from http://www.meatlessmonday.com), it is a "non-profit initiative of The Monday Campaigns, in association with the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health".  Its goal is to reduce meat consumption by 15 percent in order to improve the health of our bodies and our planet.  I just signed up and I'm pretty giddy about it. Meatless meals can be better for us and Hot Mama Earth, and they're pretty cheap, too, which is nice, since I think we're all on a bit of a budget crunch these days. (Price a pound of beans versus a pound of meat the next time you're at the grocery store. They are super-cheap!)
 
If eating cow/pig/chicken/lamb/fish-free on Mondays completely bumfuzzles you as to what to fix for dinner, you can even sign up for the site's "Eater's Digest" weekly emails, which provide vegetarian menu ideas and recipes to help you plan.  If you've been kind of eyeballing the whole vegetarian lifestyle for a while, for health, ecological, or cost reasons, there's a veritable SLEW of books and recipes out there for you. 
 
One of my favorite food blogs is 101cookbooks.com.  The absolute best food out there.  For those of you thinking that "if it doesn't have meat, it's not fit to eat!", Heidi Swanson will change your entire perspective on vegetarian cooking.    Her broccoli crunch salad- lightly steamed broccoli florets, purple onion slivers, caramelized shallots, thin apple slices, candied almonds, and a creamy almond dressing- makes me want to hit somebody it's so good. She also had the good grace to write a cookbook, "Super Natural Cooking", that is all about ways to incorporate more whole foods into your diet and weed out the nasty old refined bugaboos. Start with her website- it has loads of recipes, and then buy the book if you like what you see (as I'm sure you will). And she is a photographer by trade, so the photos of her food on the site and in the book are beautiful. (I actually drooled on one of the pages in my cookbook, I kid you not- it was the page with the minty chocolate chip cookies.)
 
Anything by the Moosewood Collective will probably be awesome. The Collective runs a vegetarian restaurant in upstate New York and has written loads of cookbooks over the years. I have the "New Classics" one, and my goal is to one day, get my butt in gear and cook through it. It has 350 recipes and you can pick it up for about $17 on amazon. It's not strictly vegetarian, with some seafood dishes in it, which perfectly fits into my lifestyle, (apparently, the lingo for one like me who limits meat intake but isn't strictly vegetarian is called a "flexitarian"). 
 
And there are scores of other ones: Veganyumyum is also a great blog, as is VeganMenu.
 
If you're not entirely into the whole vegan/vegetarian thing, but want to try and eat more sustainably, then you have to pick up "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle" by Barbara Kingsolver, about how she and her family lived off only what they could produce themselves for 1 year. It's a similar theme as the "seasonality" way of eating that is presented in the "French Women Don't Get Fat" books, but with a more hands-on approach. Basically, it's a return to whole, natural foods, as least-processed and locally-produced as possible. "The Omnivore's Dilemma" by Michael Pollan is another good book, and if you want a graphic-in-your-face look at how Nazi-death-camp-like factory farms are, try "Skinny Bitch". 
 
(The factory farm sections of "Skinny Bitch" are truly not for the faint of heart, but they are a sad reality. I cried at least twice. It was almost enough to make me go vegan overnight, and I might still get there someday, but right now, I try to buy meat from animals that have been treated as humanely as possible and much less of it than I used to.)
 
Sure, you might congratulate yourself on buying organic, but have you ever thought about where organic tomatoes and cucumbers come from in the dead of winter? Definitely not anywhere in the continental US, I can assure you, unless they are hothouse-grown, and then they just taste like mush. At the grocery store this weekend, I needed to get a red bell pepper, and was surprised to find that my organic bell pepper was a "product of Belgium". 
 
Seriously? I live in a tropical climate with a long growing season, and we're importing our produce from Belgium?!? It was so tragicomic that it stopped me in my tracks. I just stood there for several seconds, trying to wrap my brain around such a strange concept, but I couldn't do it. Apparently, I'm not that creative. No wonder this single pepper was $2.49. It must cost a fortune to ship them here, not to mention all the extra fossil fuel emissions that are created during the shipping process.
 
Why do we as consumers just accept that this is the way that our food is grown? Why don't we do more to demand that our food is pesticide- and herbicide-free, doesn't contain genetically modified organisms, hasn't been irradiated, and is grown within at least 500 miles of our homes, (though 15 miles would be fantastic, I think it's too much to ask at this time)? I'd much rather eat foods when they are in season- when they are cheaper, taste better, and have probably traveled much less than when they are out of season. I'm willing to give up fresh raspberries in January for $4.99/pint from Chile for some common sense growing practices.
 
Women are the primary food-buyers and food-preparers in this country; what you choose to feed your family and yourself steers the course for what the food industry offers us. I'm not asking for drastic changes, just a few simple tweaks:
 
-go meatless every now and then ( if you do it on Mondays, we can be meatless buddies!), and when you do eat meat, try to make sure that it came from an animal that was treated as humanely as possible , with no added hormones or antibiotics
- try to eat what's in season and as locally-produced as possible
-if you can't find the organic version of something in particular that you need, get a good fruit and veggie wash with grapefruit oil (you can also find recipes for how to make your own online) to remove the chemicals so you don't eat them
 
I'm done bitching now, I swear. Or, at least for the time being...