Communities and Eating Habits

I enjoyed sharing my experiences with others during this project. Since none of my friends are vegetarians, it was nice to finally meet other people who had to deal with changing their eating habits. I definitely understood and related to Stephanie’s challenge when she wrote in her Step 3 post that eating with her family made things harder. Whenever I go home for the weekend, my mom always cooks dinner with meat. She made stir-fry with chicken a few weeks ago, and I insisted I couldn’t eat it, even though I could “just pick the chicken out”—but that almost felt like cheating.

Seeing Stephen’s posts also made me think about eating more organically. It’s easy enough to avoid meat (for me at least)—just don’t buy it or put it on your plate! But eating organically requires a lot more thought and planning, around exactly what you might be consuming in the dining hall or buying in the grocery store. It almost makes me want to take my own habits one step further and challenge myself to buy more organic foods, although that would definitely force me to be more conscientious about my budgeting. Organic food is expensive!

Thinking about community, I decided to experiment with exploring online communities and found some really well-reviewed vegetarian recipes: black beans with quinoa and eggplant parmesan. I never considered myself a very good cook before, but I made these recipes over Easter weekend and my family adored them.

The positivity of these experiences makes me want to continue on with vegetarianism past this project, but I’d love to take advantage of the community aspects as well. It would be great to find other vegetarians on campus with whom I could share recipes and experiences (and hopefully kitchens … my dorm only has ultra-tiny kitchenettes!).

I feel really optimistic about the future!