I’ve been M.I.A. for the last few days… don’t know if you’ve noticed.

We took a trip to Nashville to visit some friends/family and got back WAY later than our bodies could handle Sunday night… then our middle of nowhere internet didn’t work yesterday…

Story of my life.

If you were wondering, we had a blast in Tennessee. It was a hot, sweet tea, thick accent filled weekend.

Glorious to be back in the South.

I never really have noticed how much I’ve changed since moving from Texas two years ago..

My accent has faded, my tolerance for heat has declined, and I don’t eat meat any more… well at least for the next 3 weeks.

As you are well aware, I gave up meat for lent. To say the first two weeks were difficult would be the understatement of the century… they were catastrophically difficult. I’m Texan… our love language is steak.

This past week something has clicked though. I’m finding it much easier to pass on animal products as a whole (you heard me… I’m trying for vegan-ish eating the rest of lent) and I think it’s attributed mostly to planning before eating.

Before, I would get so frustrated when I get home from work and the only thing to eat besides animal products was cereal… don’t get me wrong…. I am an avid cereal lover but I can only eat it for so long without going cray. So the other day I was catching up with one of my BFF’s from college and we were talking kitchen talk and swapping recipes, when she told me about how she makes buffalo chicken wraps almost weekly.

Consider this inspiration.

I ran to the store and bought some buffalo sauce, a can of black beans and some romaine lettuce. Heated up the beans, washed the lettuce, mixed 2 tbsp of buffalo sauce with 1 tbsp of ranch, added the sauce to my beans… and voila! I had black bean buffalo lettuce wraps!

As you can see, I enjoyed this meal on my porch… have I mentioned how much I adore spring??

I’m planning black bean burgers, avacado/garbanzo bean salad sandwiches and a gluten free, dairy free veggie pizza for this week…

Whew… it takes a lot of work but totally worth it.

What have you been eating lately?

Please tell me that you have some delicious and nutritious vegetarian recipes to share with me!