New Year New Plan

It is 2013 and I am going to restart this old neglected blog page. 

I am doing something new this year, something I said I would never do - try a vegan diet.  It all started with this article   http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kathy-freston/vegan-diet-cancer_b_2250052.html   Women with a vegan diet had 34% lower rate of cancer for the 'women's cancers'.  This caught my attention since both of my parents died from cancers in their early 50's.  My mother had uterine cancer and 2 separate instances of breast cancer.  I will be 50 this year and really do not want my genetics to catch up with me. 

An interesting part of the study was the meat eaters.  The study group was the Seventh Day Adventist population, many of whom are vegetarians or vegans.  The meat eaters in the group ate less meat and fast food than the general population and there was still the 34% difference in cancer rates.  I already only ate 'happy meat' or meat that was treated in a natural and humane way during its life. Everything was free range and grass fed.  When eating out, if I didn't know the source of the meat, I ate fish or vegetarian. 

So why not try the lifestyle?  Starting on the 1st I said goodbye to meats and dairy.   That was particularly hard because we had a party at a friend's house. No salmon, cheese or sausage for me.  Pumpernickel bread, olives, dolmas, orange fennel salad, polenta (I think the polenta had chicken stock but not sure.  I am not going to quiz friends about every ingredient in a dish.) and pears were enough for me.

Starting tomorrow, I am  following the 21 day kickstart from the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine.  http://pcrm.org/kickstartHome/   I spent today making wild rice soup, salsa, corn rolls, ginger vinaigrette, roasted red peppers, stock, and my steel cut oatmeal for tomorrow's breakfast.  I am also hoping to revive my cooking skills that result in everything being made in house.  I am using premade whole wheat bread and spaghetti this week, but everything else will be from scratch.

This will be more of a challenge for my husband, since he does not plan to be a vegetarian during the year.  I have some meat, cheese and eggs around for him.

So, here we go through a different rabbit hole.