My relationship with food is rocky.
I'm a notoriously picky eater. For the longest time, I ate nothing but sandwiches, Chef Boyardee, and cereal every day. In my defense, I made the best sandwiches. When we would go out, I would gorge myself. Even though I am Hispanic, I can't eat a lot of Mexican foods because of the spices. I actually get sick if I have anything spicy or with too much spices in it.
So most hot foods are out.
I loved steak and ham and those were always staple requests for birthdays or visiting my mom. My mom loves to cook. I cannot. I barely learned how to cook when me and Rony moved in together or else all we ate was junk food and take out.
I started gaining weight and would start working out and counting calories but it was miserable. I gave up soda and if you knew me growing up, that was huge. I would drink almost a liter a day. Chicken and poultry is easy and so is fish for the most part. I mostly only made beef if I was browning it for spaghetti.
Last year, Rony made the decision to slowly give up meat and go vegetarian. He would pick a meat and give it up then a few months later give up another meat. First pork then beef and on July 5th, he gives up poultry. January 1st he'll give up seafood and be an official vegetarian.
He's done a good job and has stuck with it for the most part, only slipping a few times if he didn't realize an order came with meat or if family made him food and we felt it was impolite to turn it down. We're doing the goodbye tour of poultry this week, visiting his favorite restaurants one last time.
We've talking about being vegetarian before and I don't think I could do it fully. I have a hard time finding things I like to eat and cutting down my choices just seems like a set up for failure.
But, I've finally given in on one thing. I've decided I'm giving up red meat when Rony gives up poultry on July 5th.
I watched too many animal videos and videos of cows acting like puppies.
This is a big step for me. I love steak and hamburgers and beef with broccoli is my FAVORITE. But I think it'll be healthy for me. I have a lot of health issues that it should help with and we've haven't even bought red meat in so long since I couldn't cook it for Rony.
It's going to be hard and I'm going to whine, but I think this will be good for me. I still don't think I could ever be full vegetarian, but I can relent on this. There's options for me and once we move, there's a lot healthier alternatives.
But it's going to suck. Like real bad.
Now I get to go on my own farewell tour and eat all the things before next week.
-Sam <3