Meatless Monday: Peanut Butter Jelly Time!

For those not in the loop, Meatless Monday is a movement that encourages
people to give up meat once a week to 'promote personal health and the health of the planet'.
They have great recipes on their website and tons of information there too.

I go meatless pretty often.
For oh so many reasons:
1) My health- I just don't digest meat as well. I get all acid-refluxy and heart-burny. Especially if I eat fried meat. All those years of eating my grandma's southern fried chicken must have caught up with me.
Plus, while meat is high in protein, it is usually high in fat that I can do without (with the exception of seafood).
2) Animal Ethics- I don't like how the critters are treated in order for me to get a mass produced hamburger. It disturbs and saddens me. And I don't know what sort of hormones and crazy chemicals are in that there meat either.
3) Meat is expensive.
4) I enjoy so many other foods!

With that said, you should know that I am not a vegetarian. I do still eat meat ocassionally. But I try to give myself and my family satisfying and healthy alternatives.

I'm not posting a recipe for Meatless Monday today. I saw a delicious looking Cheese Souffle recipe that I'd love to try out. But, for now, I just wanted to show you Noah's lunch.

Well, obviously it was made with love, as you can plainly see by the heart-shaped sandwich.

But I'm particularly happy with this lunch because:

I made the bread myself...I know what he's eating...I know what's in that bread. (I have been so thrilled that I can make my own bread! I want to shout it from the rooftops!) Maybe I'll share my recipe soon...and some close-up bread pictures to make you ohhh and ahhh.

I made the Grape Jelly. You can read about that in my Food Waste post from a few days ago, and get the recipe and instructions from The Frugal Girl's blog.  

The smoothie there on the upper left is made with yogurt that I made and blueberries we picked over the summer (oh, the summer seems like lifetimes ago!). Plus, I snuck in a handful of fresh spinach leaves into that smoothie. They disappear completely, and you can't taste it at all. However, if I use frozen spinach- I do notice a slight spinachy flavor- I recommend fresh spinach if you want to be super sneaky like me.

Of course, I didn't make the peanut butter or grow those baby carrots...but I could have. And I would've loved to have made that yogurt from the milk of my own cow...that I lovingly milked myself. Maybe one day...a girl can dream, can't she?