Meatless: Day 1

I have been a card-carrying carnivore for most of my life.  Even when I dabbled with food combining for a few months in high school, I still had a lot of meat in my diet.  So what would possess me to decide while thinking what to have for dinner last night that I wanted to be vegetarian?

I think it’s because I was reading Steve Pavlina’s blog.  Although he is a vegetarian, that’s not what motivated me… at least not directly.  For about five and a half months, Steve changed his sleeping pattern to polyphasic.  While most of us have a monophasic sleep cycle in which we have a long, unbroken sleep each night.  A polyphasic sleeper will take many shorter naps throughout the day.  It seems that most people have difficulty adapting to this type of pattern, but those that do generally report having higher energy each day and needing less sleep. 

Steve wrote a very detailed account of his first 30 days as a polyphasic sleeper in his blog and included updates over the following months.  I was completely fascinated by his account.  I decided this alternate sleep pattern is something with which I want to experiment.

A theme that popped up a few times in reading the account is a belief held by Steve and some others who left comments that adapting to polyphasic sleep is far more difficult if one is eating meat.  I won’t rehash the rationale here, but it seems plausible enough that I am willing to go along with it.

So the question became just how seriously am I interested in this serial napping.  Just four months ago I blew up my diet when I learned I was gluten intolerant.  Almost everything I had previously eaten was off limits, and I had to learn a whole new way to eat.  Am I ready to go through that process all over again?

Truthfully, I think that experience of changing my diet to remove gluten is probably what makes me know I can do this.  This type of fundamental change in one’s diet is neither easy nor convenient.  It can be done, though, and in this case I think the potential benefits are worth dealing with the obstacles.

So I became a vegetarian last night sometime between 6pm and 9pm.  We had a late dinner of potatoes and onions in a coconut sauce over rice.  The onions were surprisingly sweet; I guess they were Vidalia.  I had the leftovers for lunch today.  The experience of bringing my lunch to work (which I’ve avoided for years) was actually kind of nice.  I can’t wait to have some of millet bread for a snack when I get home.  We tried that last night, too, and it was a very pleasant surprise.  I’d resigned myself months ago to the idea that I would never again bite into a slice of bread and feel truly satisfied.  What a delight to be proven wrong!

I feel good initially.  I like the holistic reinforcement that this choice seems to align with all of my major goals: losing weight, getting off prescription medications (I take a proton pump inhibitor for acid reflux), sleeping more efficiently, progressing with yoga, having more disposable income (from taking my lunch to work if nothing else), and making Katy happy.  She’s wanted us to make this sort of change for years, but I just wasn’t ready before.

photo credit: Matt McGee

She Said: Gluten-Free in Aught Six

A few posts down you may have noticed my dear, darling husband’s glowing praise of the “Walking Taco.” Lest any of the readers of this site continue to believe that our switch away from gluten lead us right into the bottom of a Frito bag, the wife would like to clarify a few things.

Let me start by stating, for the internet record, I like Walking Taco. Do I love it? No. Do I think about it early in the afternoon with anticipation of the evening meal to come? Certainly not. Do I even eat it with Fritos? Ah…..no. It is hard to claim that my version of the Walking Taco is anything, but a taco salad. I use totilla chips, taco meat, cheese, tomatoes, lettuce, and sour cream. Put it all in a bowl and viola! But, is that a Walking Taco or a taco salad?

Now, let’s take a look at what my husband does. He uses Fritos, taco meat, and cheese. Put is all in a bowl and viola! Wait!! What?!? Did I say bowl? Why yes….yes, indeed I did. The whole point of calling it a Walking Taco is because you can walk with it all contained in your little Frito Snack bag.

I ask you, people of the internet, is this a true Walking Taco or just a sorry attempt for my husband to remove the word “salad” from anything he consumes?

Ode To Walking Tacos

Before getting to the walking taco bit, I should explain that a few months ago I was diagnosed with Celiac Disease.  You may be asking yourself, what the heavenly crap is that?  I'm not smart enough to explain the mechanics of what the disease does to my body, but I can explain the effect it has on my life.  Gluten, a protein that occurs naturally in wheat, barley, rye, and other grains (as well as unnaturally in many processed foods) is strictly verboten.  I'm sure I'll post more about it in the future, but I bring it up here only to point out that I lost a lot of the foods I love to eat with this diagnosis.

I miss pizza.  Katy actually prepared a gluten-free pizza earlier this week that was wonderful, but she had to spend two and a half hours in the kitched to do it.  That's a far cry from picking up the phone and waiting for the doorbell to ring.

Most of the changes are like that.  Food selection can no longer be spontaneous; it requires a lot of planning and forethought.  There is one notably tasty exception: the walking taco.

Take a bag of corn chips.  (I recommend Fritos original corn chips, but any will do.)  Open the aforementioned bag.  Insert taco meat.  Insert shredded cheese.  That's where I stop, but my wife will continue to pile on lettuce, tomato bits, and sour cream.  Insert fork.

The hardest step here is browning the meat.  Fortunately, that ranks very high on the list of the three cooking tasks I can do without adult supervision.  (The other two are boiling pasta and putting things on a cookie sheet.)  It isn't quite as convenient as picking up the phone, but it does strike a good balance between tasty, cheap, and easy.