Vegiversary Extravaganza!

Saturday night we celebrated my one-year Vegiversary. My friends know how to eat. One of our past get-togethers involved t-shirts celebrating the plethora of casseroles present. Our Christmas celebration involves three meals (and constant snacking) carefully spaced amongst present opening. We take it all very seriously.

We had burgers (cow and vegetarian) and vegetarian sausages on the grill, mac & cheese, my leftover recipe #16, sweet potato fries, salad, and fruit pizza.

They even made me a cake!

Someone asked me if this was what I had in mind for my vegiversary. Honestly, I had hoped that I would have an arsenal of delicious vegetarian recipes at my command. I imagined myself putting together a vegetarian feast that would knock everyone's socks off. There are problems with this:

1. The New Year's resolution, while enjoying some success, hasn't given me a ton of new recipes I love.
2. I don't want to spend all weekend in the kitchen preparing food, and my friends wouldn't want to hang out with me if I did that anyway.
3. One of us is lactose intolerant.
4. Two have limited ability to handle spicy food.
5. Another of us, while being a vegetarian, doesn't like mushrooms or tomatoes.
6. Let's review: no mushrooms, tomatoes, cheese, or serious spice. That's 70% of my diet. The other 30% is chocolate and coffee.

The pitch-in went much better than a dinner entirely prepared by me, and I'm very grateful I have friends who will enthusiastically celebrate my milestone regardless of whether they share my beliefs about food.

May this be the first of many celebrations.

To become vegetarian is to step into the stream of Nirvana.

~Buddha