It’s the New Year and my husband has agreed to a bar bet.  His co-workers bet him that he couldn’t stay off meat and sugar for a month (he can eat eggs and dairy).  The loser/s has to have … well, I’d rather not specify the penalty, but let’s just say it’s an uncomfortable but healthy thing to do to ring in the New Year.  Sigh, …, I’m sorta cheesed off, but at the same time I see some hope in fnally being able to convert my husband into a healthier eater.

In general, my husband and I enjoy meat a lot and have never considered being vegetarians.  Humans are omnivores and we don’t have any moral  believes against eating meat — okay, well not entirely.  There are some animals we won’t eat.  Anyhow, when my husband confronted me with this bet, I laughed (really, really hard) and told him good luck.  He asked if I was going to help him, and I honestly told him, “No way!”  Then he gave me a crushed look and said that I didn’t believe in him.  Oh, man did I feel bad!  He really wants to do this.

Needless to say, I’m helping my husband through this bet.  The worse part for him will be giving up sugar because he is a soda addict and enjoys quite a bit of candy everyday.  The first day, yesterday, went pretty well.  Since the bet doesn’t include eggs and dairy, there is quite a bit of room getting protein into him.  Yesterday I fed him an omelette and toast and for dinner we had vegetable curry.  I put a fried egg on top of his.  I’m a little worried about feeding him too many eggs because they are high in cholesterol, but I figure this has got to better than his usual donut or big cheeseburger breakfast (nope, I can’t control what he eats outside the house).  This morning I cracked open a couple of cookbooks and I found some interesting recipes to try and went grocery shopping accordingly. 

I think the toughest time period for this will be eating in Las Vegas during CES.  The day he made the bet is the same day that I made a bunch of restaurant reservations because for me, CES is about gadgets and food.  Steve asked me to reconsider the reservations, and I told him I felt that this was part of the challenge.

I’m now looking quite forward to getting through the month with my husband Steve.  The outcome that I would like is that he finally gives up soda, like I did 6-years ago.  I would also like it if he ate better after this and lost a little weight.  On a purely selfish note, I get to learn some new recipes that I would have never tried before for fear of my husband asking, “Where’s the meat?”

If any of you have some vegetarian recipes to share with me that you think I should try on my husband, please do share them :).  I will share what works for us as we go along.