Cheese...bur...ger

If you've got kids and have been forced (or forced the kids) into watching Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, then you know EXACTLY how that title is supposed to sound.

Last night T and I were discussing our eating habits. We stumbled onto Ellen D's vegan blog, and briefly considering going vegan. For like the two seconds it went from brain to mouth. We decided there are two reasons we can't, at least not right now. First, I love cheese. I don't love string cheese so much anymore (thanks Leprino), but Cheddar, Muenster, Pepper Jack... just yum! T's reasoning was that she likes her steak and chicken too much. Fair enough. So we decided to change things up a little. Right now we average two or three veggies dinners a week. That's not too bad, but why not up the ante and make every night veggie except one or two?

I decided to enlist the opinion of little man. What does a four-year-old know? Suprisingly... A LOT thanks to his older brother. Apparently one night when adult ears weren't around, he decided little man needed to know where meat came from. Imagine the fun I had when he ran to me, thrust his half-eaten cheeseless cheeseburger (wait for the story on that one) in my face, and demanded to know if he was really eating a dead cow. Well... yeah. Why sugar coat it? He's a smart kid and he'll figure it out anyway. Then came the question I was waiting for: BUT WHY DO WE HAVE TO EAT DEAD ANIMALS???

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Hmmm....You can't very well eat them alive. Okay, you could, but that would be mean and you'd probably go to jail/incur a fine/have horrible guilt-plagued nightmares for the rest of forever. Besides, we do because people have hunted for a very long time, and we've liked meat for a very long time. No, we don't eat dogs. Or cats. No, we didn't hunt that cow. We didn't even raise that cow. Some guy on some huge farm grew that cow and had it killed so that it could be ground up and made into a hamburger (cheeseless cheeseburger) so we wouldn't have to see the face of the animal we were eating. The problem is this: he loves meat - for the most part. He loves cheeseless cheesburgers. Yes, I KNOW that's just a hamburger, but try telling him that. It tastes different. I don't know. He'd cry if it had cheese, but then he'd cry if it was called a hamburger. Drama queen.

Anyway, after months and months and months of telling him "yes, that's a dead _____," I asked him last night if he'd like to eat less meat and more fruits and veggies. YES!!!! But more fruit more than anything. He's a kid. He likes sugar. What can I say?

So that's the direction we're headed. Less meat. More fruits and veggies. We already do veggie tacos every week. What are a few more days without meat going to hurt? Besides, maybe with meat more out of sight, we can focus on the fact that he's now eating dead PLANTS. And that's okay. Because they don't have faces with sad eyes wondering why in the world you'd want their meat for a CHEESEBURGER WITHOUT CHEESE!!!