Why am I doing this?

I’ve tried doing blogs before, but I always lose interest because I don’t know what to write about. For his New Year’s Eve resolution, Mark decided to become a vegetarian. He’s done this before a couple of times, but at some point, usually about Jan 6th, we go out to eat and he orders chicken and I remind him that he’s supposed to be a vegetarian – since he’s already ordered the chicken, and doesn’t want to annoy the waitress by changing his order, he officially ends his vegetarian foray. This year, my resolution was to eat more vegetables, so I bought Vegetables Every Day by Jack Bishop, mainly because Mark Bittman was quoted on the back cover, and I am a fan of his. I wasn’t completely satisfied with the book, so I went searching the bookstores again. Most vegetarian cookbooks turn me off -too much tofurkey and other fake meats. I believe there is a link between breast cancer and tofu (because of its phytoestrogens) so I don’t want to eat too much of it (that will be another post). I decided I should look for a vegetarian cookbook that focused on Mediterranean food, since my favorite types of cuisine come from this part of the world. I found just the thing – Mediterranean Harvest by Martha Rose Shulman. Lots of recipes that sounded good, but I kept thinking that I would love to find a vegetarian cookbook by Mark Bittman. Lo and behold, B&N had a display of How To Cook Everything Vegetarian by Mark Bittman, with an enticing yellow and green cover.

Armed with 3 new cookbooks, I decided to join Mark in his vegetarian adventure-since he wasn’t going to eat meat, there didn’t seem to be much point in cooking it just for myself. I eat meat and chicken when I go out if I don’t see anything vegetarian that I like on the menu. Years ago, when I was working, I always looked for the diet-friendly dishes on the menu; now I look for the vegetarian options. I haven’t cooked meat since Christmas (I made a roast with yorkshire puddings which turned out really delicious). For the last 10 weeks I’ve made a lot of different meals of veggies and legumes. It’s been really fun trying different recipes, so I thought I’d start writing about what I’m cooking. And since I cook often, I should have a steady stream of stuff to blog about.