What's a Vegetarian to Eat?

For the past year, I have been a "vegetarian". The decision was spurred by my desperation for pain-free digestion (I know, already! My life is really glamorous!), and stuck with me once I started feeling good after meals and realizing that it's not that hard to eat a plant-based diet.

This is me eating vegetarian cupcake batter. 

I say that I'm a "vegetarian" because I'm not a full-fledged, militant vegetarian. Frankly, if it weren't for industrial farming, pink slime, and hormone-laden feed for animals, I probably wouldn't qualify myself as any kind of special eater, and I'd try to reincorporate meat into my diet.

I am a "vegetarian" because I spend a lot of time at client lunches and airport dinners with people I don't know, and it's easier for me to explain why I don't want to go to the best barbecue place in town if I'm a vegetarian. People seem to get that.

That's hasn't stopped people from asking if I want the chicken salad sandwich after I say I'm a vegetarian. The great salad conundrum, I know!

The reason I'm a "vegetarian" with quotation marks is because I'll eat fish. Sometimes. Like, maybe once every three weeks. I like seafood, and I make sure whatever I'm eating isn't corn-fed and farmed. But I don't depend on fish as the cornerstone protein of my diet.

Enough explanation! I eat lots of plants!

Carrots are plants. 

However, the past year of vegetarianism has made me confront some of my food demons. Just like other normal people, there are some foods I just don't like, and there are some foods that I just thought I didn't like. Coincidentally, quite a few of the foods on my "yuck list" as a meat eater are foods that are stereotypically "vegetarian".

I'm talking about you, mushrooms, beans, and tofu!

So here are two list: Things I Still Don't Like and Things I've Decided to Like.  These are all things that I "didn't like" as a meat eater and have retried in the past year. Hooray for lists!

Things I Still Don't Like:


1) Mushrooms

I've honestly never been able to get over the fact that they are fungus. The texture is weirdly spongy, and they are a little too earthy for me. Probably the fungus on my tastebuds.

2) Tofu

I think my biggest problem is that people try to make tofu something that it isn't simply because it's spongy, flavorless smushed up soybeans. Putting barbecue sauce on tofu doesn't make it a steak. "Be who you are and be that well," St. Francis de Sales said, and tofu, you are not a steak.

3) Brussel Sprouts

I get that this is like, the most stereotypical food not to like, but I feel like sprouts have gotten, shall we say, fashionable recently, and I haven't been able to get on board. They're just too cabbagy (yes, it's a word now) for me, and my thought is, "No wonder so many recipes tell you to cook brussel sprouts with BACON."

Bacon makes everything taste better, and I'm not ashamed to say it.

Things I've Decided to Like:


1) Quinoa

I will go ahead and say I full-on love this. I had a bad experience with it due to my ineptitude early on, but when I decided to charge ahead with this vegetarian phase (sure Matt, it's a phase!) I gave it another shot, and I'm so glad I did. I eat this all the time!

2) Avocado

My entire life I've thought that avocado was goss, slippery, green mush that ruins perfectly good salsa. Then I learned as a vegetarian, restaurants that are scared of vegetarians seem to love putting avocado on stuff. So I tried it again. And then I had really good guacamole. And then I learned it was a superfood, and I was sold.

3) Beans

I'm still on a learning curve with beans. As a meat eater I had serious texture issues with beans (Soft but grainy? Mushy but firm? Excuse me while my mind explodes.)

But just like the mushrooms and avocados, I had a give them another shot for vegetarian solidarity. Now I'm a total convert to black beans - make these burgers STAT - and I straight up snack on garbanzo beans.

White beans and kidney beans I'm still coming around to, but I'd say I'm off to a good start.

What food do you wish you liked but you can't seem to convince your brain to like it? Mine is strawberries, so if you made it to this question you can yell at me about it. What food do you love that I should try? Don't say strawberries.