It has been six weeks now since I stopped eating meat. By the second week, I started feeling better than I’ve felt in YEARS. I’m now able to do things I haven’t been able to do and eat things I haven’t been able to eat in so long that I had forgotten what it was like to be healthy. I am in awe of the power of food. Truly. Had I but known that the change would be this dramatic and positive, I could have saved myself so much heartache. Of course, when have you ever known me to do things the easy way?

So, since Mym is most emphatically NOT interested in removing meat from his diet at this time, I’m learning, for the first time, to nourish myself. Oh sure, I took cooking in junior high Home Ec and made the occasional family meal at home growing up, but I wasn’t a foodie then. When I went off to college, I ate whatever was cheap and easy to stick in my face so I wouldn’t starve. Thanks to my upbringing, that tended to be healthy foods, but the downside to that was a lack of real understanding about nutrition. I knew I needed protein, carbs, and green veggies, but not why I needed them or in what proportions.

It just occurs to me that this is the same level of understanding I had of the English language in high school. Thanks to a lifetime of devouring books, I could tell bad writing when I saw it, but wouldn’t necessarily be able to tell you why it was bad in technical terms. Such is the danger of a limited grokking, I suppose.

At any rate, back to food. I have been cooking it and am beginning to enjoy the process as well as the result. Even Mym has taken some of the dishes to work for lunch (plus meat). And, as it happily turns out, I like quinoa. The first time, I’d had it in an instant mix that was supposed to be a substitute for oatmeal. It was terrible. The real stuff, however, is delicious. To wit: Quinoa and Black Beans

Thank you, universe, for the wake up call and thank you to my vegetarian friends, for being so awesome.