Help a veg girl cross over ;) - Page 2

[craft_media_hero]

    

So many great ideas on this thread! Thank you all so much!

[JMJ]

Originally Posted by akmeg 

All I have to say JMJ is...YUM!  Your whole day sounds so perfect to me.  Just the right amount of grains, meat, soup, and veggies, with a bit of sweetness thrown in.  I might just copy that daily menu every day!

Glad to be helpful.  It's been a long evolution for us.  Some recent additions have been to add some more seafood and seaweed, drink Kombucha, and now I'm trying to add some more fermented veggies.  I'm also not perfectly good every day but it really helps to have ideas on hand of foods that I'd like to eat and not feel guilty about that are providing some positive nutrition for my body.  When you first switch to a new diet, it's so much easier to see all the things that you can't have, and it helps to have a stocked fridge, freezer, cupboard, and purse full of good things to eat.  If I'm hungry, I'll eat, and if I don't have healthy food around, I'll eat whatever I can get if I'm hungry enough.

[tanyalynn]

Originally Posted by craft_media_hero 

About soaking seeds, etc.-- do you just dump the soak water and then cook in broth?

It depends on what, exactly, I'm cooking.  When I make refried beans--because they're not soup-like, they're a lot thicker--I do the 24-hr soak/ferment and dump that water, and then I simmer the beans til they're done in plain water, and then drain and add sauteed onions and garlic and spices with the fat, and then as much stock as it needs (sometimes I let that simmer a bit to reduce the stock).  But for lentil soup or anything else that's a real soup, I cook the lentils in the stock and add the veggies and such at the appropriate times (just following whatever the original recipe says).

[SandraMort]

I'm in the middle of stuff but don't want to lose this thread, so I'll reply quickly and get back to this later when I'm more focused.... vegetarian for 10-15 years, four of those vegan.  Temporarily ate meat at the end of my third child's pregnancy, then resumed full time at the beginning of my fourth, never went back.  Despite that, dh is ovolacto except for stressful times, when he lapses to pesco (and usually crap from BK, at that!) and the kids are ovolacto-except-for-gelatine (I make handmade corn syrup free  marshmallows and am hoping to start a small business).  

I do the roast a whole bird, strip off the meat, portion it for different things and freeze in servings if it's not going to be eaten in the near future, then freeze the bones, skin, scrap fat etc for broth making yesterday.  This weekend, there was a death locally and I pulled out the bone stash, started broth with rice wine vinegar, himalayan salt, onions, celery and red bell peppers, then roasted a whole chicken seasoned with himalayan salt & habanero sauce over the skin.  I ate the crispy skin & wings right away, stripped the breast meat off to chill and add to the finished soup later and bagged up the dark meat to eat later, then tossed the carcass, flabby skin from under the bird, scrap fat & scraps of meat into the soup pot with the already simmering soup.  I cooked it while dealing with my stuff, then scooped out the solids.  It chilled overnight and the rendered fat (schmaltz) hardened on top, easily removed, and the broth gelled underneath.
 

ANYWAY, I need to get back to work, but I'll chat more about the transition later.  Good luck!!!  It may be what your body needs but that doesn't make choking it down any easier.

[SandraMort]

Why pull out the giblets and neck?  I roast them along with the bird and then toss them in the broth, or toss them into the broth along with the raw chicken if I skip the pre-roasting step.  I don't bother with the liver because one liver is not enough to bother cooking, but pass it along to the cats.

As a moment of laughter, when I was learning to process chickens, I found recipes reminding me to remove the paper envelope from the bird to be HYSTERICALLY funny.  If I found a paper package inside one of MY birds, something would have been seriously wrong!!!

Sandra
 

Originally Posted by krankedyann 

Pop the chicken in the crock-pot (remove the giblets and neck if it's in there

[sapphire_chan]

Originally Posted by SandraMort 

Why pull out the giblets and neck?  I roast them along with the bird and then toss them in the broth, or toss them into the broth along with the raw chicken if I skip the pre-roasting step.  I don't bother with the liver because one liver is not enough to bother cooking, but pass it along to the cats.

As a moment of laughter, when I was learning to process chickens, I found recipes reminding me to remove the paper envelope from the bird to be HYSTERICALLY funny.  If I found a paper package inside one of MY birds, something would have been seriously wrong!!!

Sandra
 

Um, but isn't it best to at least check that the gibbets and such aren't in a bag? I mean at least until you know how your chicken source prepares the bird?

[SandraMort]

LOL!  That's the point.  I was butchering them myself.  If I chopped off their head, pulled off their feathers and opened them up... to find a little paper bag?  SOMETHING would be very wrong.  :)

Sandra
 

Originally Posted by sapphire_chan 

Um, but isn't it best to at least check that the gibbets and such aren't in a bag? I mean at least until you know how your chicken source prepares the bird?

[Ruthla]

For the whole chicken, I would roast the chicken first, eat the roasted meat (or eat some and slice the rest for later meals), and then make soup out of the roasted bones. I think the raw bones give a slightly tastier broth, but roasted meat is so much tastier than boiled meat, and I personally don't like boiled poultry unless it's small amounts floating in soup.

I generally eat eggs and veggies for breakfast, meat or fish or cheese and veggies for lunch, fruit and nuts for afternoon snack ,and then meat (or fish or cheese) and veggies and grains for dinner. I generally have meat or poultry once a day and fish or cheese for the other meal (fish more often than cheese.) I don't do well without animal protein at each meal and I don't do well if I have grains more than once a day. When I have beans, it's with veggies and animla protein- it reduces my portion of meat but doesn't eliminate it. You may find that you do well having meat a few times a week and vegetable protiens for most of your other meals, or that one kind of meat is more nourishing for you than another kind. We're all different.

My lunches are generally leftovers, or a can of sardines over a salad. DD1 usually packs leftovers for lunch, DS usually has rice and beans in a thermos or a cheese sandwich, and DD2 usually skips lunch at school and then has veggie/bean soup after school for lunch. DS usually has oatmeal or cereal and milk or yogurt for breakfast, DD2 eats homemade cookies in school, DD1 packs quiche, and I make omelettes (or sometimes sauteed veggies with farmer cheese instead of eggs) for myself.

Dinners we generally eat together. I try to rotate various meals: we roast a turkey half breast on Friday nights, usually "breakfast for dinner" on Saturdays, pizza once a week, beef burgers, stir fry (with leftover turkey but tofu works too), sometimes meatballs or meatloaf, shepard's pie, or meatball soup. We tend to use a lot of ground meat because it's cheaper, and none of us really feel satisfied with dinner if there's no meat in it (except for pizza night, and I don't want us having that much cheese more than once a week.)

[craft_media_hero]

Wow, thank you all so much for the welcoming feedback and great ideas!

I love the details about what is eaten for different meals, etc.--that's the kind of information that I'm trying to wrap my head around and really internalize.

We have been relying waaay too much on breads, cheese, and fruit, which of course sounds like a yummy indulgent picnic lunch, but is not the greatest basis for our family's health. I'd like to move more toward relying primarily on meat and vegetables, a bit of whole grains/legumes, with minimal dairy, fruit---but old habits die hard! and I am having to learn entirely new patterns for how to cook and feed my family. Plus dh and dd are sugar/carb addicts and want fruit, bread, jam, etc for snacks while I reach for chips and salsa which is pretty much the same thing just in a different shape ;) Soooo.....I think snacks are our weak spot! 

I have tried boiling the chicken (because it seemed the easiest method) and the first time, it was good, but the second time (using crockpot) was overcooked and mushy, yuck! So I think I will try the roast chicken idea next time.

Oh, and that congee for breakfast idea,  mmm, gotta try it!

[SandraMort]

Yeah, I don't like boiled chicken much either, though if I make chicken soup, I figure there's no point in wasting the meat and put it into something highly seasoned to give some flavor.  

Who said something about congee for breakfast?  That sounds great, I could go for a bowl of congee, maybe with some kimchi, right about now.  Not that I have any.  I wonder if presoaking the rice in acidulated water would speed up the cooking process as well as breaking down the phytic acid.  Hey, while I think of it, does anybody make congee with brown rice?

As an aside, I've noticed that if I ignore meat cravings and continue eating too little animal protein, when I finally eat it, it takes a lot more meat to make me feel human again.  I'd been telling friends "I'd kill for a steak" for a while... not sure how long but it had to be at least a week.  I've no idea what I was eating in the meantime but I'm assuming mostly vegetarian starch centered.  When I finally got meat, I ate the entire 1.3lb steak in about 12 seconds and if I hadn't frozen the rest, I'd probably have cooked a second.  But I felt SO much calmer afterwards.  Starch based ovolacto really does a number on my moods & ability to control my temper!  I ought to go back to the store and see if the rib eyes are still on sale and put more in the freezer.

[sapphire_chan]

Originally Posted by SandraMort 

LOL!  That's the point.  I was butchering them myself.  If I chopped off their head, pulled off their feathers and opened them up... to find a little paper bag?  SOMETHING would be very wrong.  :)

Sandra
 

 

Lol gotcha. That'd be crazy creepy.