food
Good morning everyone!! I often talk about MY experience with transitioning to a plant-based diet and every time I share my thoughts or progress … I always get questions about Justin and how he has dealt with the transition. Since both of us grew up in Alberta, meat was always a huge part of our lives. It by no means was an EASY transition for either of us. Every single day we have to work towards incorporating more plants and fewer animals and are always learning and experimenting! Anyways, I’m sure most of you know about my journey so far but today I wanted to do something different and let Justin share HIS journey with you!! Here we go, Justin … take it from here and dish out the deets!!
Hey everyone! Justin here. This plant-based journey started around three years ago. Jill used to take me to Heirloom Restaurant in Vancouver and I remember getting so mad when she wanted to go there because I always felt like there was nothing on their menu that I wanted to eat. Keep in mind, at this time I was a big meat eater so I thought anything “vegan” was stupid, I absolutely hated it.
Even though I was a carnivore, I knew that animal cruelty was a real thing but I was completely ignorant to it. This is where that saying “Ignorance is bliss” comes in, and it couldn’t be truer. I knew that animals were being harmed and slaughtered but I was oblivious to the extent of it (or at least wanted to be). I should mention here though that not ALL farms are abusive but it does exist out there and I was having problems seeing the videos and the stories on the news and it just turned me off! However, we make SOME exceptions with small family farms but it is rare that we eat meat, which is crazy to think about now as I grew up in an Italian family, we literally had a meat slicer on my kitchen table, my parents would buy those huge cheese wheels and big blocks of meat, we would slice them all up and make sandwiches out of them every day! I was a carnivore through and through and in my mind I didn’t understand people being “vegan” and just thought it was so LAME to only eat plants.
Fast forward three or so years and somehow Jill has pulled off transforming me to eat pretty well entirely plant-based MOST of the time. I honestly have no idea how she did it, I never thought I would say I don’t eat meat. I’m thinking maybe it was subliminal messages or something lol. I will admit though that the first few vegan meals she made for me were terrible, they weren’t good, I had no desire to eat them at all and I always felt hungry after. But Jill stuck with it, she is always trying out new things and finding new ways to cook and now I love her meals. They are hearty and comforting and you still get that cheesy taste in her dishes without the dairy which is awesome. As I mentioned above, I’ll still eat the occasional meat and dairy products here and there but it’s been drastically reduced since I’ve been able to educate myself more on it … and since Jill’s vegan cooking has improved.
If I had to give a piece of advice to any stubborn meat eaters out there I would say, to just be open to the idea, eating vegan isn’t all salads and sliced veggies! There are tons of awesome meat substitutes out there that taste pretty similar to the real thing so you can give up the meat but not miss the meat taste if that’s your thing. If you don’t believe me, check out Jill’s recent Super Bowl spread, or her veggie burger reviews!
Thanks for reading everyone!
