My family is generally supportive when I get on a health kick.    Or at least they act supportive.  

If I say “I’m not eating sugar”, I get  quivering bottom lips, but they say “okay”.    If I say “I’m not eating meat for 2 months”, they try to hide their scared  expressions, but they agree.   

Sometimes I fear they are in agreement because they don’t feel they have a choice in the matter.   And I hate that.   I don’t want them to feel  they are at the mercy  of my whims.   

However, I’m almost at the end of the first month of meat fast and let me tell you…the natives are getting restless.   Really restless.  

To add to the dilemma, I’ve eaten all the bowls of salad and legumes that I can stand.  

I’m doing this post because I need suggestions and/or help.

But first, you should know everything that brought me to this post.

I’m going to tell you a couple of short stories.

Today…I didn’t cook.   I’ve been finishing up my kids 4-H record books.   The deadline was today.    After they were finished, cooking was the last thing I wanted to do.   I just wanted to kick back and chill.

So, I pulled hot dogs and chili out of the fridge so the meat-eaters could have coney dogs.   The non-meat eaters had cheese and veggie pizza.   The meat eaters didn’t want chili dogs.   They wanted pizza.   But, they couldn’t eat the pizza because the pizza was for the non-meat eaters.   UGH.   It was a tense moment.

AND…about the pizza, let me tell you another problem I’ve noticed.    If your not careful, bread and cheese will quickly replace bowls of salad and legumes in vegetarian diet.   

Next story…

I made a skillet full of vegetarian goulash a couple days ago.   One of the “natives” came into the kitchen and was lapping it up straight from the skillet.   He even made a comment about it tasting like “the bomb”.    As he’s shoveling it into his mouth, he asked “does this have meat in it”?   After I said “no”, he didn’t eat another bite.    Below, is a picture of the actual meal.   It was very good.

Now, please understand, I’m not upset at my family for not being on board with my new way of cooking.   I want everyone in my house to live in harmony.    I do think my meat-eating family members would be happy if recipes were flavorful and interesting.  

I don’t want to cook two different meals everyday.   I don’t want to buy groceries for two different meals.   

Even, if don’t remain a vegetarian after February 11th, I do plan to cut my family down on our meat consumption.     

I’m tired of eating salad and beans and I can’t replace salad and veggies with bread and cheese.  

Do you understand my dilemma?   Do you have suggestions on managing a house divided with meat eaters and non-meat eaters?   Do you any vegetarian recipes that will please my meat-eaters?

How do you handle vegetarian meal burnout? 

Any ideas or thoughts would be appreciated….