Stuffed peppers  

One of the reasons I wanted to start this was to document some of my conversion from 22 years of carnivorous habits to a decidedly more flora-based diet. In the two years that I lived off of Creighton's campus, I cooked quite a lot for myself, even preparing vegetarian meals - if not purposefully or with any moral/health compunction. Becoming a healthier person even than I was before is important to me now: I'm out of college. That's a big step towards "cleaning up the act" and eating right is a major way I'm going to do it.

For the record, it has very little to do with morality now..I guess I'm more worried about our species than those we raise. Certainly the ethics of factory farming and mistreatment of conscious beings play a certain part of it, but as with many the human endeavor, there's a bit of helplessness involved as well. Such as, if a restaurant has already bought the meat and prepared it for consumption, it will be eaten by someone anyways, and I do enjoy the flavor. Thus my relaxation of my newfound principle when I eat out. Similarly if I'm a guest, etc.

For the U.N.'s report on factory farming and the environment: http://www.unsystem.org/SCN/archives/scnnews21/ch04.htm#TopOfPage
Wikipedia article on philosopher Peter Singer's book "Animal Liberation":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_Liberation_(book)

So tonight I made a variation on stuffed peppers with rice that my mother makes, very pretty and colorful, and like everything posted here so far, with no meat involved.

To describe:

Over a bed of spinach with a cherry tomato medley border topped with crumbled feta cheese, I dropped two cut-in-half bell peppers (one yellow, one orange, for the record), which I had placed on top of other vegetables in the wok for a couple of minutes. The stuffing was based on basmati rice, into which I mixed garbanzo beans, a few mushrooms, capers, reasonably fresh basil leaf, and a hefty dose of onion and chopped garlic. To add a sticky, paste-like quality, I mixed in a spoonful of the yogurt cheese. I stuffed the paste into and around the peppers, poured some balsamic vinegar/olive oil dressing with pine nuts over them and onto the salad.