Category Archives: gardening

Eating Our Friends

In the past few months, our house has become vegetarian. I have toyed with the idea for awhile now and I would say that I cooked 75% vegetarian beforehand, so it has not been a shock to my kitchen.

How did it happen?

My husband, meat lover, had an epiphany after listening to a song by a rockin’ kids band called Lunch Money. We saw them perform live and they sang a song that included the lyrics, “We gotta watch out for our animal friends”. That was enough for my husband. Our son lasted a few weeks until he announced that he “wanted to eat his friends”. How about me? I’m thinking of eating meat as a special treat. If someone is serving it I may have some. It has been really fun to discover meat substitutes and grains like quinoa and red lentils. We also got a really great cookbook Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone. We keep kosher in our house, so it’s made that easier as well.

Does Barefoot have a book about being vegetarian? You bet. Our brave hero is Herb the Vegetarian Dragon. His fellow dragons are Meat eaters and scare the local townspeople but not Herb. He peacefully tends to his organic vegetable garden and makes Leek and potato soup (yum!). He is an outsider in the Dragon world and at one point is pressured to eat meat to save his life. Herb stays true to himself and helps the dragons make peace with the townspeople.  The book is beautifully illustrated by Debbie Harter.

The web has been a great resource for vegetarian cooking. Do you know of any great blogs or websites about vegetarian cooking? Any recipes to share?

Where’s Spring?

Two weeks ago I planted bulbs, today I watched it sleet. I really want it to be spring. My son and I planted seeds (inside of course) and read What’s This? by Caroline Mockford. It’s a wonderful story about a girl and her cat caring for a seed and watching it grow into a sunflower. It made my son excited for our trips to our CSA, http://www.mountainviewfarmcsa.com/

We also read Winter King and the Summer Queen. The King and Queen are in conflict over the weather on Earth, the Queen sending warm sun and the King sending cold and snow (very appropriate for today). We just got this book the other day and I’ve read it to my son 4 or 5 times as well as listened to the story on CD. He enjoys the description of the King with his “spiky icicle boots” and “trousers made of glaciers and a huge, snow-blown cloak.” Brrr!

To learn more about these titles visit www.discoverbarefootbooks.com