Let's Be Honest - Food and Holidays

Image from Wikipedia

I'm a faux vegetarian.

I know some people will judge me for it, but it's true. I've accepted it. Here's how life works as a faux vegetarian.

From January until Thanksgiving, life is easy. Making and enjoying food as a veggie is casual, yummy, and convenient. It cuts back on grocery bills, encourages our family to eat healthy foods, and doesn't make my stomach feel like a brick every evening. This makes life happy for everyone in our household.

But in the life of a faux veggie, Thanksgiving and Christmas come around every year throwing a wrench into all of my little plans.

From Thanksgiving until January 1, it's hard to eat:
1. Healthy
2. Vegetarian
3. Self-cooked
and not alienate and destroy every relationship with family members and friends I possess or care to possess. I'm not being overly dramatic either. Let's say we go have an extended family dinner the weekend before Christmas. Great Aunt Sally is going to throw a fit or at least a few passive-aggressive comments if I don't eat her turkey gravy, because "I've always eaten it before and she went to so much hassle to make it." In truth, I don't have a Great Aunt Sally, but I'm sure if I did, this is how our early-Christmas interaction would work out.

When visiting family over holidays, I am often the recipient of food rather than the maker of it all. After all, I'm still considered one of the "children" in my family and have yet to inherit the responsibilities of head chef or pastry chef.

I'll be honest. I enjoy it. I love cooking and baking at home, but every now and then, especially during the holidays, I like to take some time off. Who doesn't?

So I ate meat.

I even enjoyed steak on Christmaseve-Eve. I prefer whole sliced meat to hamburger meat because it hasn't been ground and is more "clean." It was free and my father did an excellent job preparing it.

I've learned to be thankful for meals I don't purchase or prepare. This includes meat. While I was likely to make a scene about meat during my early years as a faux vegetarian, to me it isn't worth the hassle any more. Don't get me wrong, I prefer non-meat items. However, I'm an adult now and pay for my own food and manage my time, and being a full-time veggie isn't my top priority, especially from November until January.

But now that we are in a new year, and I am once again the queen of my kitchen, I probably won't be grilling out any steaks anytime soon.

I am happy to detox, appreciate veggies, and eat clean for the next few months.

So call me a faux veggie all you want. I've finally found a balance between what I prefer and what is prepared for me.

Hooray for steak! Hooray for salad!

Happy Weekend.