The Ninth Day of Christmas - What's your rotation?

I had some serious thinking to do today about the post for The Ninth Day of Christmas, because as passionate as I am about the abolition of the exploitation of animals, I sort of feel like I've been talking about it ad nauseam and I don't want anyone to feel disheartened by the state of the world at present. {confession - I am disheartened. I've learned the word speciesism and we suffer from it big time} It's an entire rabbit hole I could very easily get lost down. 

No, this post needed consideration because I had to stop and think {feel my way into} why I wanted to write these twelve days of Christmas leading us through the holidays and into my bold new choice to turn to a plant-based diet in January via Veganuary. 

I chose to do it partly because I wanted company on this new journey, but mostly I decided to do it because I needed to keep myself accountable to be sure I wouldn't back out. What I hadn't counted on was there being a small part of me who's hoping that by writing about this change in my life, I might be able to inspire at least one other person to also make the change. {and now that feels like the biggest reason, because...}

It's estimated that by going vegan, one single person will save 198 animals in a year, and two people making the change would save 396 and so on. I have no idea where these statistics come from but I read it here. 

So today, I was left wondering... If I want to help you or someone else make this {I'm just gonna say it} gigantic decision, was there a way to make it easy for you? Why yes there is. Welcome to The Ninth Day of Christmas...

Identify Your Personal Dinner Rotation

I'm a nerd. I love making lists. I love reading stats. I'm into doing frivolous research and digging up little known facts. I'm a writer. We live to procrastinate and doing "research" is one of the best ways that I know how to do that. Why do you think this post is coming out so late? I was looking shit up, noble reader.

Guess what I've discovered? Turns out that the majority of us rotate our way through about nine recipes.  If you're anything like me, you're both fussy and lazy which is a bad combination when it comes to making dinner. Thank the good Lord that someone invented Foodora or I might have starved to death this past year. But seriously, think about it. I bet you have your go-to's. And you have variations on what gets slipped into the rotation depending on the season, am I right?

Omigod, it's so weird for me to be talking about cooking. The last thing I am is a food blogger. Well actually, it was pretty weird for me to write about an exercise routine back in the day and in fact, being a blogger was odd to me back then too. Now I just put all sorts of stuff out into the world from my little corner of the interwebs. So lemme get back to the post at hand would ya? Geez. 

Ima talk about what we make for dinner and how we can build on what we already do, so making this lifestyle shift won't feel so effin' foreign.

According to one study I read, it said many people are put off trying new recipes because they think the ingredients will be expensive or making new dishes will be time consuming. Maybe we're dealing with fussy eaters who are reluctant to try new things {again in my case that would be me}. Whatever the reason, they say most home chefs revert back to the recipes they know and love.

Let's take a moment to think about what our favorites are. I don't know about you, but I'm a huge fan of the one dish meal, especially in the winter. Things like hearty soups, stews and casseroles. In the summer I'm all about enormous salads with millions of toppings. Back in the day - I was all about the stuff. If I was having ice cream, it wasn't real ice cream unless it had tons of stuff in it. Now I'm off sugar, I feel the same way about my salads. Don't just gimme lettuce. I'll give you my worst WTF face. Lettuce simply isn't salad in my book. I need crunchy bits like radish, nuts and seeds, and cucumber. Soft bits like tomato and avocado. In between things like sprouts, micro greens and tortilla strip thingies. I love me a Shan salad.

Anyhoo - some of my favorite {read: super easy, fast, and one dish} meals include a North African Quinoa Paella, sounds complicated but it's not. Indian Dahl with Rice, whatever's in the fridge soup, baked potato with a - you guessed it - shit-ton of toppings like black beans, butter and cheese. RECORD SCRATCH! What the hell am I gonna do now that I can't have butter and cheese on my baked potato? It's cool - calm myself. Deep breath. This is exactly what I'm talking about. Your favorite meal might be a shepherds pie and you might be thinking that very thing. What the hell am I gonna do if I can't have ground beef. Chill! We got this. You can get a very good ground round and I'd bet you barely notice the difference. I once made tacos for my sister's family and they all said they had to have ground beef. I was vegetarian at the time so I said sure, no problem. I think proceeded to make the tacos with ground round and feed it to them. They seriously didn't know the difference. It was brilliant.

I may never find the exact right substitute for my cheese {I guess Daiya makes a pretty good one} but I love love love Earth Balance.

Throw some 'a that on the old jacket potato and top it with black beans and salsa and voila, totally simple easy fast and new favorite go-to.

So what are some of your old faves that you can make plant-based? I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments below. 

I'd also like to encourage you to take some time this holiday season, if you're lucky enough to have time off, to browse through some new recipes and see if you can't experiment a little bit and maybe find some brand new faves for going green in the eighteen. Once again, my most tried and trusted ladies are Ella, Angela and Alicia, but that's just a launching pad. Use the old google machine to see what you can find. Loads of amazing chefs who cook all foods will also have some vegan choices for you if you dig.

Tonight, I'm making Alicia's rustic pasta with garlic bread. And you can bet your ass it's vegan gluten-free babies.

Here's to your sparkling health and happiness on this, the ninth day of Christmas and into the eighteen.

Love,
Shan

Oh, and don't forget the animals...