Part of me says, "You shouldn't be bragging on Christmas Day." Another part says, "Dude, go ahead and brag -- you aren't bragging about yourself, but about your wife, Laurel."
I'm listening to that part.
For while the title of this blog post might seem to be an exaggeration, it accurately reflects the prevailing opinion among me, Laurel, and five friends we invited for a Christmas Eve dinner at our house last night
Well, in the history of Christmas Eve dinners is an embellishment that I added for dramatic effect. But it's true that all seven of us agreed that few people were having as healthy a main dish as what Laurel served for dinner.
Here's a photo of my leftover plate that I'm having for dinner again today.
It's a vegetarian loaf with organic lentils, kale, brown rice, and carrots, with cranberry sauce as a glaze on top, plus some other minor ingredients. (It was supposed to have a celery stalk also; Laurel forgot to put it on the list when I went grocery shopping on Sunday, so celery wasn't included.)
UPDATE: Here's a link to the Ultimate Vegan Thanksgiving Load with Cranberry Sauce recipe. You have to scroll down a ways to find the recipe on this web page.
Since I've been a vegetarian for 55 years, with no meat or fish entering my mouth during all that time, I readily admit that my taste buds are so attuned to healthy vegetarian food, there's no way I can compare this veggie loaf with turkey, ham, or any other food that once was walking around -- assuming it was raised outside of a factory farm, since in those places some animals don't have enough room to walk.
All I can say is that it tastes good to me, as it did to everybody who ate it last night. Of course, our Christmas Eve dinner included some other food: mashed potatoes, salad, green beans, chocolate cake, poppy seed cake. Our guests contributed several of the dishes.
I'm not religious, but it was a Christmas miracle of sorts when I got on the scale this morning for my daily weigh-in and found that not only hadn't I gained any weight, I had lost some, even though I ate quite a bit last night.
That's a side benefit of eating healthy vegetarian food during the holidays, as well as throughout the year. It tends to be lower in calories.
My weight has bounced around a bit during the vegetarian phase of my life, which began when I was about 21. Currently I weigh just a bit more than I did in high school. However, my height is a few inches less (damn aging!) so my BMI, body mass index, must be greater now.
I'm not a strong proselytizer for vegetarianism.
Still, I'm not shy about pointing out that not only is giving up meat good for a person's health, it's good for our planet. Raising animals for food is a major contributor to rising greenhouse gas emissions, which makes being a vegetarian wise both personally and environmentally.
FYI: The tradition continues. This election cycles edition of the "Silvertongue Apple-Peal" is now online and available as hard copy, (send Snail Mail address for a copy).
Best regards,
Gus Frederick
Posted by: Gus Frederick | December 26, 2024 at 08:15 AM