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I have a nemesis.  Truly, I am thwarted every single Monday when it comes to meal prep.  Oh, Meatless Monday, how I dread your arrival!  It’s not like I don’t know that Monday is coming. It comes every week, usually after Sunday.  After having enjoyed a lovely week-end, getting back onto the hamster wheel of the work week is not appealing.  Add to the fact that there is no meat involved?! I’m losing this battle.

Yes, this is a choice that the Hubs and I made together in an effort to improve out health and well being.  I have read the discussions about what meat does to your body, how eliminating animal products and going vegetarian or even vegan can have a crap-ton of positive effects. I’ve got “Forks over Knives” in my Netflix queue.  I’ve got friends who are vegetarian, vegan, and paleo, who swear, swear, swear by their respective lifestyles.  Sure, I want to be healthy. I want to have the good cholesterol and strong arteries.

I also want to have a plate of steak frites sometimes, too. 

I’m almost embarassed at how much I struggle with the lack of meat for JUST ONE DAY.  It’s laughable, truly.  I won’t starve, though I have been a little crankier than usual come Monday afternoons. I’ll admit it, I eat a lot of red meat.  If you are what you eat, then I’m a ribeye with legs.

So, yes, I was willing to step up to the challenge of Meatless Monday, put down my steak knife and A-1 sauce.  I know that there are other forms of protein available — cheese, legumes, quinoa, and even fish, since (in my opinion), it’s not meat like Moo-Moo or Bucka-Bucka or Oink-Oink (like my technical terms?).  But even when it comes to Blub-Blub, I mean fish, my selections are limited.  If I’m out at a seafood restaurant, chances are I’m ordering some kind of shell fish — clams, scallops, shrimp, crab.  You’re not going to find me tucking into a plate of mahi-mahi, trout, tilefish or the like.  Maybe some orange roughy, if it’s fried, but even then, why waste a meal out on something I could, theoretically, make at home?

Over the course of the last couple of months since we started this, I have stuck to the plan and made other food choices.  We’re buying mostly chicken and fish when we’re getting groceries; as a matter of fact, I’m thinking I’m more like a chicken cutlet with legs at this point.  Bucka-Bucka!

The past few weeks, when I crack open the freezer Monday afternoons in preparation for Monday night, I reach for some salmon fillets for the Hubs and the girls.  Then I reach for the PB&J for myself.  Seriously, I’m whipping up some bourbon glazed salmon with rice and a green veg for them, and then slapping together a lunchtime staple served up on a paper plate for myself.  Anyone else see a discrepancy here?

Meatless Monday leaps out at me like “Rrrrrraaaarghhh!” and I’m always like, “Whoa! What?! Again?!”  We usually have a really nice Sunday dinner and leftovers are involved. I get kind of funky about food left in the fridge too long, though.  If there are leftovers, they need to be consumed within one or two days of their original preparation.  After that, I swear I start seeing them grow beards and whiskers.  So, what happens when you have a standing rib roast for Easter dinner, no one takes any leftovers home with them, there’s a cinder block sized piece of meat in your fridge leftover and you’ve committed to abstaining for meat the following day?  Yes, these are first world problems, I know. 

Ideally, I’d slice up that meat and we’d have steak fajitas for dinner.  Or, I’d lay it over a salad or find some kind of creative way to use the meat before (in my eyes), it started to turn.  Just add “weird about leftovers, and perhaps food in general” to my list of quirks. I don’t mind.

I’ve got several girlfriends who are kind enough to just tsk, tsk, tsk, at my foolishness and then send me a stack of meat free recipes.  There are pasta dishes, quinoa dishes, dishes heavy on the veggies, all of which look delicious and I would have no problem whipping up — if I got around to planning ahead for them.

Proper prior planning. . .usually I’m pretty good about this.  When it comes to Monday meal prep, I just figure if I don’t address it, it’ll go away.  And then what happens is PB&J’s all around.

Guess I better stock up on the peanut butter. . .