Meatless Mondays

In June, I decided once a week we should try eating a vegetarian meal for dinner instead of eating meat as the main dish, which is our typical dinner. And just to make it a little more fun, I chose to have our vegetarian meals on Monday so that we could call it Meatless Monday.

There basically two reasons I thought this would be a good idea for us to try.

1. It is frugal. Meat is expensive. Beans, veggies, eggs, and other things that make for good vegetarian meals are cheap. I thought it would be good for our grocery budget to have one less meal of meat during the week. Plain and simple.
   
2. It is better for the environment. The meat industry creates greenhouse gases - lots and lots of them. In fact, according to the Environmental Defense Fund eating one less meat meal per week is the same as taking half a million cars off of the road in the U.S. in reducing carbon dioxide emissions. The meat industry is also one of the largest producers of the greenhouse gases methane and nitrous oxide. So, reducing meat consumption helps to reduce these gases in our environment.
   

Because we had so many meals provided for us after Brenden was born (which was such a huge blessing!) we've only been eating meatless meals for about 4 weeks. In that time I've also been thinking about all of the people in the world for whom meat is either a luxury that they just can't afford, or something that they don't have access to at all. They eat vegetarian meals out of necessity, not by choice, and I think that it is so important for us to remember just how fortunate and blessed we are to be able to eat what we want, when we want.

Also, I have been trying to be committed to not eating meat for breakfast or lunch when at home with Kaelyn. This is partly because K doesn't like to eat meat, but also came from a suggestion by my friend, Jenica, as a way to reduce our meat consumption. We do eat meat sometimes for lunch, usually when eating leftovers from dinner, but it has at least made me more aware of trying to find meatless alternatives for lunch time.

All in all I think it's been a good thing for us so far, although my hubby may disagree with you, he's not a huge fan of the vegetarian meals. If you have any good meatless meals, I'd love to hear about them, please leave a comment with a link or a recipe!

image source