Michael & Liz are Bloggable

Most of the people who pay attention to this blog know this already, but as of tomorrow Liz and I are vegetarians for the whole month of August. No chicken, beef, pork, and not even fish. It's going to be tough but we aren't going at this alone.

After briefly mentioning it in a previous blog, Scott and Hillary (Liz's brother and sister in Colorado (see the link on the right (yes I have 3 sets of parenthesis))) emailed me and said "We would totally do that with you!" So we chose August as the best month to do it. Why August? Well I think this was brought up around April-ish and I wasn't so prepared that I wanted it to be May, June and July were shot because Liza was here, October was shot because of my marathon, and November and December because you've got to be kidding me. So that left us August and September and I'd rather be eating meat during the part of training that I am doing 17 and 20 mile runs, so August it is!

I also found out this week that Liz's Mom will be joining us but I haven't gotten a definitive answer whether she is including fish in her vegetarian month. I'll let her comment on that :).

So I think the only thing left to be answered is the why, and I think the only answer I can give is "why not?" I could go into a big list of pros and cons like my brain always likes to do, but I won't this time. There's absolutely no down side other than the fact that you'd miss meat. You aren't going to go into meat withdrawal. I don't think there is a whole lot I'll be missing out on other than protein and I'm fully prepared to make it up with some beans and peanut butter. I know for some argumentative people this statement is difficult not to pounce on, but I think being vegetarian is healthier. I am hoping that by giving up meat I will realize that my plate doesn't have to revolve around one substance and I will eat less because of it. I think we'll be doing a lot more snacking on things like watermelon and bananas. I think our(and by "our" I mean Liz and I'm going to try really hard to contribute) cooking is going to become a lot more creative because we can no longer just throw some sausage on the grill and make a side item. It's going to be a lot more casseroles and stir-fries and pasta recipes.

If we get nothing else out of the month, we will get some sweet new recipes and a better work ethic around the house. Liz has checked out 5 vegetarian books from the library and we have a big huge list of options now for dinners. I was thinking Vegetarian Month was going to be less expensive but looking at what goes into these meals, it might be the same.

I will update periodically on our progress but tonight as our "last meal", it's cube steak parmesan... mmm... delicious cow.