Meatless Monday: A Series

In the continual quest to eat healthier and take better care of myself, and my family, I try to find new ways to keep things interesting. Contrary to what many people think, healthy-eating isn't the monotonous consumption of iceberg lettuce, tomato, and cucumber drowned in blue cheese dressing. Healthy eating is freakin' delicious...especially if you're constantly finding ways to switch it up! One way I've been doing this is participating in "Meatless Monday" for the past month or so. Carnivorous Kimora would have never imagined a day when she had a meal without meat--on purpose! But, Meatless Monday has become sorta like a celebration to me now, and I look forward to the challenge of figuring out my yummy meatless meals.

Why go Meatless?? Meat is AWESOME!

Meat is, indeed, pretty awesome. However, according to Meatless Monday's website (yeah there's an actual website. I know! Thats what I said!) there's lots of benefits to going meatless for one day a week:

-Limit cancer risk
-Reduce heart disease
-Fight diabetes
-Curb obesity
-Live longer

Besides the obvious health benefits, you'll also be helping the planet, which is way in line with my conscientiousness!

-Reduce your carbon footprint
-Minimize water usage
-Help reduce fossil fuel dependence.

You can read more about it here.

What does this mean for Uncreatively Conscientious?

Meatless Monday meal ideas!! I'll post a few of the meals I've had in the past few weeks of participating in MM, and for the upcoming ones, I'll post recipes that I use. The point here is to inspire you to make better choices and discover the yumminess of healthy meatless cooking!

But eating meals without meat has to be hard! What am I gonna do about protein??

It's one day, buddy. You'll live without eating a chicken boob for 24 hours.

Past Meatless Monday Dinners

Remember that basil quinoa cake? Well here's another use for it! Quinoa cake topped with baby spinach, a bit of marinara, a slice of mozzarella, and a slice of tomato, baked like regular chicken parm. For the "pasta" I simply julienned zucchini and carrot.

 From my vegetarian cookbook: Homemade sweet potato ravioli with a garlic cream sauce. Here's the recipe.

I stole this idea from Instagram! lol! I saw someone posted something similar and I just had to recreate it. Baked acorn squash with brown sugar and walnuts, stewed lentils, and a yummy salad. 

  

 Another stolen idea from Instagram, with a few tweaks. Baked plantains, brown rice with cilantro and lime, cuban black beans, and a salad with avocado slices on the side. This was absolutely delicious.

Past Meatless Monday Lunches

 A vegetable tart with salsa verde recipe from my vegetarian cookbook. This was so yummy! I put the store-bought pie crust into the oven to bake by itself to bake and get nice and golden. The vegetables (zucchini, red pepper, onion, potato, capers, artichoke hearts, and probably some other things I can't remember) were sauteed in a pan with herbs. They were put into the baked pie crust, topped with chopped spinach and salsa verde. It didn't stay together well but it was another yummy recipe I'll be revisiting.

A veggie sandwich on whole wheat. Always a delicious staple meatless lunch. 

Homemade black bean burgers on whole wheat with various veggies, and a sriracha mayo. 

The naan bread "pizza" with black bean "hummus" from my previous blog post!



Experiment with your meatless meal options. Browse Pinterest, and Instagram, and steal those ideas! You'd be surprised the amount of delicious vegetarian or meatless meals you can find on there. Oh, and check in with Uncreatively Conscientious to get regular Meatless Monday meal ideas! You tell your friends, to get with MY friends, and we can BE friends! We could do this every weekend. Is that aight? Is that aight with you?? *Obvious Hip-Hop reference from the 90's*