What’s with all this veg­gie con­tent lately? Where’s the beef?

Well, frankly, we feel like explor­ing veg­eta­bles, grains and the like for a bit. How often do you find your­self eat­ing meat with every meal of the day? To have sausage with break­fast, a ham­burger at lunch and chicken for din­ner is not atyp­i­cal. Look at the meat though, was that sausage made with the nasty bits and left­overs? Was the ham­burger from a fast food joint? Was the chicken from a fac­tory farm?

If you buy a potato it’s always a potato, if you buy a sausage it’s not always a sausage. Potatoes can’t hide fatty fillers and chem­i­cal binders under their jack­ets but a sausage sure can.

Consider a dif­fer­ent menu every once in a while. Try fried toma­toes with break­fast, falafel or pasta at lunch and spanoko­pita or three bean chili for dinner.

There are so many options but we often get stuck in ruts, mind­lessly throw­ing the same things in our shop­ping carts week after week. Look at things like lentils, soba noo­dles, quinoa, brown rice. Do they frighten you? Why? All you have to do it cook them like pasta. Boil in salted water until ten­der, drain and serve.

What about the end­less vari­eties of curry pastes and pow­ders? Just grab one and get in the kitchen to exper­i­ment with it. Butternut squash tossed with biryani paste and roasted, tan­doori masala pow­der mixed with yogurt coats cau­li­flower before sautee­ing it up with lots of gar­lic and onions, egg­plant stewed with okra and tomato in a cur­ried coconut sauce.

Closer to home, put whole wheat pasta in your mac n cheese and serve it with rap­ini or make a chili with beans and corn, lasagna with spinach, sweet pep­per and feta frit­tata, bur­ri­tos with sweet potato, black bean and chipo­tle, corn chow­der with pota­toes and leeks, egg­plant parme­san, stuffed pep­pers with rice and tomato, wild mush­room risotto, spinach and sun­dried tomato quiche.…

We’ve gone from a gen­er­a­tion of meat and pota­toes to a gen­er­a­tion of any­thing goes. You have more choice than any­one has ever had in the his­tory of the planet. Embrace that.