The Supermarket Stroll

So last night was the first grocery shopping night since our decision to take a long (long, long) journey to becoming Vegan.  With the exception of my 2 year old daughter unsuccessfully trying to help by putting a glass bottle of stinky vinegar on the conveyer belt, the shopping was pretty uneventful.

I stayed with the same grocery store we usually use so the only real difference in this week's shopping trip was the planning and writing of the grocery list.  I had to put off the shopping for a day so I could spend an entire night scanning pinterest for new recipes.

My biggest issue with going vegetarian has always been the issue of a balance diet.  This is kinda funny as my current diet is far from balanced and I have a large weakness for potato chips and deem it acceptable to eat them for breakfast.  I have always hated the idea of just dropping meat from your diet.  Secretly enraged by those "vegetarians" that look down their nose at meat eaters over the usual plate of frozen corn and mash potatoes, and sometimes even meat gravy on those potatoes. 

So to me, dropping meat = bad, replacing meat = good.  This meant I need to research a few recipes with legumes.  Yeah pinterest!

As a side note I do have to say that I am very lucky to have married and Indian guy that cooks Indian food, and I have had some tutorials from my MIL.  I am confident I would not even consider becoming a vegetarian without this exposure.  Indian cooking has been my first exposure to legumes.  Previously my only exposure being the can of pork and beans my dad would "cook" us as kids, often resulting in us eating up the cut up wieners in it and leaving half the beans. 

In the years since getting married I have learned about various lentils.  This is perhaps a whole post on it's own, as there is various recipes that will save us in the coming months.  I believe that if I can cook it (and eat it), most people can. 

This is perhaps where I disclose I am a picky eater.  I am a silent "ew, ew, ew-er" and will choose to starve over eating things I persevere as gross, which is apparently many things.

I digress, seems too hard to talk about my uneventful grocery run.  So as I started saying, my cart really didn't look too different than usual.  It definitely held more veggies than usual (hmm, maybe a 1/3 more?), obviously no meat, and I had to add in some beans and seeds to help with the protein factor.

Tonight we are starting with something simple (http://www.endlesssimmer.com/2012/04/04/cornerstone-cooking-crunchy-black-bean-tacos/#more-33746) that will have evil dairy (cheese) in it to help with the bean taste...