Small steps: a meatless meal

A completely unrelated photo of Espen's cars taking their nap in our placemats.

Let's just jump right into this week's challenge, shall we?

This should be simple enough: this week we will be eating one meatless dinner. This is something we often and easily do in our family, but would still like to make it a more regular thing, so a conscious reminder is good for us too.

So, what's so bad about meat? In my opinion, not much (and yes, I will be avoiding the whole ethical debate here. If you want to know how I feel about eating meat and how animals are raised for meat consumption, just ask, and I'll be happy to tell you. It's just not an issue we'll be discussing here). It's a great source of protein, iron and a variety of other nutrients, it's filling and delicious and can be great to build a meal around. However, too much meat consumption (especially red meat) is also high in saturated fat and has been pretty conclusively linked to heart disease, type II diabetes, cancer (especially colon cancer). You can read more about that fun stuff here, here, here and here.

I think the key here (as I'm discovering more and more as I get older) are the words "too much." As I was reading up on this, just about every article and every "expert" stated that meat is just fine in moderation. And so I'm going to be trying to cut back my meat consumption a little. Ironically, while simultaneously trying to get Espen to eat more meat, but that's another story about a toddler who only wants to eat fruit and cheese for every meal.

So, here are the rules!

• This week, incorporate one meatless dinner into your menu. That simple! 
• Not wanting to disregard the vegetarians among you, let's flip this upside down, and have you make a protein and iron-rich meal this week. Then tell me what you made! 
• Need some dinner ideas? We love these Zucchini cakes and these vegetable enchiladas look fantastic. 
• Check back tomorrow, when I will be posting a recipe to one of our own favorite meatless dinners: Pasta with feta and pesto. 

Oh, and did you clean out your closet last week? I did, and it felt great! I now have one huge pile of clothes to donate, and one pile of clothes to pack away and try again if and when I ever lose that weight. I loved 1) seeing that I'm only one or two sizes away from being able to wear them again and 2) rediscovering several pieces in my closet that I haven't worn for ages because I just kind of forgot about them, or didn't think they fit anymore. It was also interesting to see that the clothes I kept are mostly fairly classic, good-quality pieces that I can probably wear for a long time. That might be good to remember when I go shopping! 

See you tomorrow!