Happy New Year

Recently a friend recommended a book called "Forks Over Knives."  I haven't read the book yet though I watched the film thanks to Netflix.  Their basic thesis is that the bulk of our health ills stem from our diet and if humans abandoned their processed foods and animal based diets and embraced a whole grains and plant based nutirition, much of our aches, pains & diseases would be completely eliminated.  The film was well done.  I enjoyed the computer graphic explanations on how our bodies work and was fascinated by the handful of testimonials given.  (Especially two women one diagosed with diabetes and the other with breast cancer.)  My fascination with their theories turned to near horror the next day as I walked through our normal Sunday preparing meals and snacks for my family.  Pretty much everything I serve, everything we love falls into either animal based or processed food categories.  So while I'm not embracing the recommended vegan lifestyle whole hog, (bad pun intended) I do realize that I need to make a couple of simple baby steps for our family.  Here are my goals, already put into practice last week:
1.  Each week I will create at least one vegan meal.      (This will turn into 2-3 lunches for me as I dine on the leftovers.)
2.  Each month I will attempt one new recipe.
3.  Each month I will research one little difference. 

So...January's meal was stir fry.  (Though Jake and Quinn ate rice and beans per Jake's request.)  I usually make a chicken stir fry with chow mein noodles & some kind of prepackaged sauce.  It wasn't hard to leave out the three offending additions. 
When our current organic whole milk runs out, I'm going to substitute cow's milk for almond milk.  We don't consume that much milk anyway, mostly to wet our cereal. 

February is right around the corner so I need to find a new recipe to try!  I hope to continue to blog about this trend.  One thing I noticed immediately is that the three days I ate vegan, I felt amazing.  Clarity of mind.  No fatigue during the day.  High energy.  Wow.  I get it.  (Especially since the day before I launched this plan we ate Steak-n-Shake and crashed two hours later and felt crappy the rest of the day.)

Peace, Rebecca