flexitarians

in order to be the credible blogger i strive to be, i wanted to provide you just one more fun fact and update on the voights from this past weekend.

if you recall, i mentioned meeting some new friends at bonge's last friday night. with these new friends came some interesting vegetarian/lifestyle viewpoints. we met the overhisers (hi if you are reading the blog now!) through one of our good college friends, meredith, who is also really cool :)

first, i have to give them credit, as brandt is usually resistant to many new or "on the bandwagon" type ideas. kudos to your unbiased presentation of alternative living! their take on being vegetarian was so welcoming that i couldn't help but keep asking questions...and eventually experiment myself! so here it goes:

i won't bog down the blog with all the many pros and cons of vegetarian-ism, but i will tell you i think they've got something going on! the best part is that their type of living is "flexible", which in turn gives us the name "flexitarian". i mean, sometimes, the worst part about trying to be a vegetarian (or vegan for that matter) are the limitations that are put on you outside of the whole consumption thing - i.e., social ramifications. i mean, you can barely eat anything fun, so it seems, so you never get to go out and be social by those pesky rules. so, being flexitarian allows you to bend the rules. heck, it allows you to make the rules yourself.

the overhisers were inspired by a book called food matters (and yes, you are right if you are thinking that i will never get around to reading it because quite frankly you know i don't read if you know me at all!) from our discussion, and of course my wonderful practical application, i learned it highlights meat's carbon footprint throughout the world, the unsustainability of high american meat consumption, and its health "unbenefits". i know you can argue both sides very well (how do you get your protein? yada yada) but for the sake of blogging, and our unpartisan take, we most likely will never get into that debate nor take one certain stance. we like to be difficult like that.

the most intriguing aspect was the fact that they spend a good amount of time together each night finding a recipe, going to the store to select the items, preparing the meal together and then of course, enjoying the fruits of their labor. this is very different to the voight mentality of any meal, as it usually only takes us 15 minutes to eat anywhere. 2 hours for a meal? impossible!

so, here we are. inspired. striving to be healthy. and officially satisfying our curiosity of flexitarian-ism. so our rules? well, we are striving to not consume meat before 6pm (aka not eat it for lunch). not that we are so much saving the world one cow, chicken or duck at a time, but that it encourages us to eat more vegetables and try new things. we are working to cook more, and even walk to the store to make a whole night of it. and like any good rule, it can be broken, exceptions are the whole point after all, so you can smudge the lines when the opportunity arises and is up to consumer discretion on validity.

the long and the short? we've prepared two awesome meals of tons of grilled and cooked veggies, black beans and tonite they are having us over for fried tofu - wish us luck!

p.s. we hold the right to discontinue, or continue, our flexitarian-ism at any time without the risk of guilt, mocking or any other such nature.