That whole meatless thing ...

Well, this is where Meatless Monday stands at present: It's become seafood Monday temporarily. My husband works alternating shifts - some weeks he's home for dinner, some weeks he isn't. The past two (and the next two, at least) he's been home for dinner on Monday. So, in an effort to feed his inner carnivore, but maintain my plan to go meatless at least once a week, I've adopted seafood as my Monday go-to. To make up for this, I am eating completely meatless at least two other days a week. Which, so far, is easy and not too fussy. I worried about that. As much as I love to cook, and try new things too, I seem to get into these culinary ruts on occasion. This being one of those occasions, I was a little worried about how difficult it would be to remove animal proteins from my diet and still feel full and satisfied - without having to do anything too weird or uncomfortable here at the beginning. But it's been breezy. Mostly I'm just loading up on fruits and veggies, low-cal snacks and lots of water during the day. Dinner I try to be more creative, but instead of freaking out over weird ingredients I'm pretty much just doing things like sauteeing veggies and adding them to a bowl of brown rice and black beans, mix in a little salsa and the slightest dab of fat-free sour cream or plain greek yogurt. *side note* I'm not approaching this from a vegan point of view. I'm attempting meatlessness, but I'm still very much eating dairy (minimally), eggs, and using chicken broths, etc. Since I'm not ready to embrace a completely vegetarian lifestyle. Possibly ever. But we'll see. Oh, and in an effort to up the ante in my kitchen I've been looking for fun recipes that aren't time consuming but are fresh and tasty despite the lack of meat. The site StumbleUpon is amazing. (http://www.stumbleupon.com/) Pretty much you just tell them your interests (mine: food/cooking) and they organize all these sites for you. Then you "stumble" your way from one to the next. You can mark it as being a favorite, which will be saved to your profile, or give it a thumbs down if you really can't dig it. I'm loving it - and I've already found some fabulous recipes I'm going to try. Okay, so maybe meatless isn't so bad after all ... Happy Eating!