Sarah Matheny - Peas and Thank You: Simple Meatless Meals the Whole Family Will Love

Simple Meatless

Meals the Whole Family Will Love

I AM SO THANKFUL.

I am thankful to God for blessing me with so many opportunities to love, laugh and learn in my life. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me (Philippians 4:13).

I am thankful to my mom for always putting a book, a pencil and a whisk in my hand, and for telling me that I could be the pilot or the stewardess, because women can do anything.

I am thankful to my dad for listening to each and every crazy whim I got worked up about, from playing guitar to long-distance running to writing a cookbook. He always believed I would be the best at whatever I set my mind to, even if I didnt.

I am thankful to my grandparents, Kinky and Papa Bud and Amah Bobo and Papa Oscar, for teaching me about family and food and the beautiful memories that can be made when they intertwine.

I am thankful to my readers and fellow bloggers in the healthy-living blogosphere. You have inspired me with your creativity and encouraged me with your comments and support. Thank you for helping me find my voice and for being willing to listen to it every day.

I am thankful to my friends and neighbors for your help with the little Peas, putting up with my hectic schedule, accepting leftovers and offering feedback. Deb, Susan, Rachael, Angela and the Debban Family, you will always have a place at our table.

I am thankful to my friend and fellow foodie, Ashley McLaughlin for enhancing our project with snippets of her beautiful photography. You humored my crazy whim to be a part of this in the last hour and I will never forget those chaotic few days when we cooked, clicked, laughed and ate ourselves silly. You are forever an honorary Pea, like it or not.

I am thankful to my editor, Sarah Pelz, for helping craft my vision into reality, for putting up with rowdy background Peas on those long-distance calls and for getting (or at least trying to get) all of my silly jokes.

I am thankful to my agent, Lisa Grubka at Foundry Media, for putting my pitch in the keep pile, instead of turning it into scratch paper, and then for turning that pitch into the very strong foundation that has become this book. You took a chance on a silly, veggie stay-at-home mom, and in doing so, you changed my life.

I am thankful to Gigi and Lulu for having an infectious enthusiasm for life that has brought new meaning to mine. And for always being willing to take at least one bite of what I put on their plates. Or for spitting it into a napkin when Im not looking.

I am thankful to Chris for saying I do. Little did you know that meant unutilized law degrees, giving up meat, closets stuffed with more pink tutus than imaginable and the late night clicks of laptop keys. You are the best husband and daddy a Pea could have.

I GREW UP IN YOUR AVERAGE AMERICAN HOUSEHOLD. WE ate cold cereal for breakfast, ham and cheese sandwiches and potato chips for lunch, pork chops and applesauce for dinner, and homemade chocolate chip cookies for dessert. It was a different time, and eating healthy meant adding just one teaspoon of sugar to a bowl of Honey Nut Cheerios, eating the crust in addition to the innards of a Wonder Bread sandwich, and drinking a large glass of milk to wash down that chocolate chip cookie.

I dont fault my parents for feeding me something close to the Standard American Diet. It was, after all, the standard. My mom was, and still is, an excellent cook, and with my chin eagerly perched on the kitchen counter, I watched in awe as she moved around our tiny kitchen. From my waist-high view, I learned how to slice vegetables with my fingers curled under, to not overmix my cake batter and that a canister of whipped cream makes excellent Christmas trees on an outstretched index finger. But of all the food lessons I learned from my family, the most important one was the value of eating dinner as a family almost every night. Sharing a meal that was lovingly prepared by my mother around a table with my brothers and my parents was more important than what was on our plates.

Even so, I made the connection early on in life that some choices are healthier than others. My dad was a smoker when I was born, and you can bet, as soon as Daddys Little Girl figured out that they werent called cancer sticks by chance, all it took were a few tears and an I love you, Daddy to change minds and hearts. My husband (Pea Daddy) has had many similar experiences as a father, most often involving something pink, frilly or an impossibly small waist, blond hair, and feet that were just made for high heels. After my appeal to my dad that night, I awoke to find a carton of my fathers cigarettes in the trash can. He never smoked again. This was my first lesson in the power of tears as a tool of manipulation, to be used less sincerely throughout my childhood and adult life. More important though, in that moment, seeing my dads Marlboros sticking out of the can underneath the kitchen sink, I realized that parents arent perfect and sometimes have to admit that they are wrong.

That lesson hit home in a different way many years later while having a snack with my daughter Gigi. She was happily munching on some orange wedges that were not-so-happily dripping down her face and onto her Gymboree shirt that I paid far too much for. As I sipped my third Diet Coke of the day and munched on a handful of Sweet n Salty Chex Mix, she did what all kids do and begged for what I had. I told her no, that soda and junk food were bad for her. I cringed when I thought of caffeine, aspartame and artificial coloring streaming through her tiny body. Suddenly it hit me: I was a hypocrite. I had a long talk with myself in hushed tones that night, poured out my diet soda cans and put them in the recycling bin. Then I finished the bag of Chex Mix and recycled the bag, too. (There was no point to just wasting food, right?) After that processed-food breakup, it wasnt long before my dietary choices moved on to even greener pastures.

I wouldnt necessarily call myself an animal lover. We had pets growing up, including a fox terrier who chewed his way through a gas barbecue hose, a hot water heater, a piece of plywood and a five-pound chocolate bar that he found under the tree on Christmas Eve. Having your dog go into cardiac arrest kind of puts a damper on Christmas morning. I liked our dog okay, but lived in fear that he would do something to upset my dad, who after cleaning up the kitchen trash strewn all over the living room for the sixteenth time had nicknamed him POSGE (pronounced PAHS-JEE), an acronym for Piece Of S* Garbage Eater.

When I started my own household, I wasnt in any big hurry to get a pet to destroy my things. Thats what kids were for. And I certainly never intended to become a vegetarian, let alone a vegan. Until one night a friend sent me an email with a video of Sarah Palin visiting a turkey farm in her governor capacity to pardon a turkey for Thanksgiving. The irony of the video was that as the rogue politician declared one turkey free, another turkey was refusing to die (much like Ms. Palins political aspirations) and was being violently slaughtered in the background. My stomach turned, my mouth dropped and tears sprang to my eyes. Im not sure what dream world I was living in, but apparently I thought that Tinker Bell came and sprinkled magical sleeping fairy dust over live turkeys and they somehow ended up on a platter in my grandmothers dining room with a side of the most delicious mashed potatoes I would ever taste.