What To Eat, What To Eat...

Being a vegetarian, I get scared about what ingredients are used in certain recipes. The more I'm a vegetarian, the more I realize how how much meat is used to fill America's stomach. At the same time, although, there is an increasing amount of vegetarians in America. 


I myself eat fish, but not much of it. I need it for the protein.  Also I am the only one in my family that is a vegetarian. It is important to myself that I continue to do this and as of now it has been over a year and a half. Everyone always asks "why?" or "are you one of those animal lovers?" No, I am not. A year and a half ago in my health class, our teacher told us to make a goal. A lot of the kids made ones I doubt they followed like "I'll eat less junk food". Well the thought of becoming a vegetarian always interested me. I wrote that down as my goal. Easy. Now I'm a vegetarian. Ha ha, no. It was a hard transition. I told my mom, and she liked the idea, but because I run year round, and need the energy and whatnot, I had to keep eating fish. (I know, that technically means I am a pescatarian, but no one actually knows what that is). 


Then, believe it or not, would just forget. Many, many times in those first few months I took a piece of chicken, put it in my mouth and the spit it out when realizing what I was just about to eat. Then there are those difficult people who don't understand the concept of "I. Do. Not. Eat. Meat." They go through making a whole meal until I say it for the last time, and than finally, they understand. "Oh! well than you probably shouldn't eat this!" Thanks, loser. Or there are those people who get offended when they think that you don't like their food and they insist on me eating it. like, "Oh, is my chicken bad? I thought it tasted fine! Have you even tried it? What? You don't eat meat? Who the hell doesn't eat meat?" Also the fact that just because I'm a vegetarian people think I love every type of vegetable and would just eat that for all 3 meals so they give me huge plate of assorted veggies. For the record, I hate mushrooms and onions. 


My biggest fear about being a vegetarian is soup. Unlike sandwiches, where you can just peek to see the piece of meat, I never know what type of broth restaurants or even my parents use in soup. For that reason, I only eat canned soup that says "Vegetarian" on the front, or if I make (or watch someone else make) the soup by scratch with vegetable broth. Other wise, I don't even taste it. I know, I'm picky. But it is true, I can never be too careful with this kind of stuff.

(Below is my cookbook. It's super good so try it!)

-Austen