I'm Turning into My Mom. Only With Less Wheat Germ

If you read the prior post, you know that we are trying to incorporate more of a whole foods and plant-based diet approach to our life.  No, we aren't going all full vegetarian or strict vegan or anything.  Which is good, because since writing that, we've still had some form of meat on the table pretty much every.single.night, BUT AT LEAST THERE ARE LOTS OF VEGETABLES on the plates too, right?  And when I say "meat", I mean our own, homegrown, organic pork and beef, raised by us and our family at home, so it's not all processed, store bought stuff.  And I can't not cook it, because 1) that'd be wasteful, and 2) we love meat.

This might be harder than I thought...but any improvement is a step in the right direction.  I will say there's probably no way stroganoff or meatloaf are coming off the menu.  Just sayin'.

Plus, we have this amazing garden, so it's not like it's a stretch to eat tons of fresh, organic produce as often as we can, (sometimes by the wheelbarrow load)...I just need some more creative ways to make vegetables more of a "main dish" rather than a side dish (no offense, Martha, but I'm branching out).

After a point, you just GIVE UP on the weeds...

The other side of the walkway, mid-August

I did actually order the Forks Over Knives cookbook, which should be here tomorrow, but we went to Barnes and Noble the other night in a blizzard because--BOOKS you guys! OMG, booooookkkks!  (My e-reader is awesome, but--I love real books.)  So of course I bought two history books ("The Plantagenets" and "Queens Consorts"--my favorite history-geek topics), and an absolutely visually stunning hardback cookbook called "Vegeterranean" (Italian vegetarian cooking), which is amazing and lovely to look through; I can't wait to cook from it.  And I love that it doesn't require a bunch of hard-to-find ingredients that I will never buy, let alone eat.

The best thing  I found, though, is "Back to Eden".  This is super cool, because just the other day, after writing a whole memory of my childhood where my mom spent a year trying really hard to make us be vegetarians (which didn't work), I remembered that she always had this book called "Back to Eden".  And then...there it was, right there on the shelf at Barnes and Noble.  Of course I grabbed it.  Reading it feels like coming home.  No wonder we never went to a doctor...

My birthday, with my dad, my aunt, mom, and my uncle, mid-70s.  Not sure why there are two cakes?  Or what is hanging from the ceiling...

I may have frowned a lot at her food choices for us as kids (all those lunches of home-made whole wheat sandwiches, cookies full of nuts, and garbanzo beans in the meatloaf), but the older I get, the more I believe:  Moms really do know best.  Especially now that I'm a mom.  (Right, kids??      Kids?)