My Vegitarian Quest

For the next 30 days, I'm going vegetarian.  My motivation is not spiritual, health related or political.  I'm doing it so my culinary knowledge can continue to grow, and in turn, make better food for Matador.  I'm going to totally immerse myself in eating and cooking vegetarian.

Normally, I'm the kind of guy who would pick veggies as the last possible option.  I'm sure I have even made fun of vegetarians many times in the past.  I never really understood why someone would give up meat.  I can understand people who think a vegetarian diet is healthy or don't want to see animals harmed.  Good for them.  I'm not here to judge people for their choices.  I don't have anything against vegetarians and we have tried to make make Matador a good place for vegetarians.  As our time goes on, our vegetarian customer base has really increased and we want it to grow even more.  We are in no way going to give up meat in the restaurant but hopefully our new tinkering with a veggie diet can even help make our meat products better as we continue to look for better ingredients and better recipes. 

Personally, I just really love eating meat.  Bacon and pork, steak, chicken, fish, turkey or whatever.  I typically like it all.  I usually BBQ at least once a week (year round).  I grew up eating meat and potatoes.  My parents grilled often, and a t-bone was our go to special meal.  My history is filled with meat.  I don't think this quest will be easy for me since meat is all I have known my entire life.

As my desire for culinary knowledge grows, I can see that I need to expand my horizons.  I guess I have been watching too many episodes of Bizarre Foods, because I'm ready to eat just about anything.  Here it goes.

I am not a writer.  I don't want to become one. I'm not a blogger and don't want to become one of those either.  I'm sure my grammar, spelling and punctuation is horrific at times.  This little blog will just be a simple diary of what I'm doing.  I do mean simple.  I'm not going to put a lot of time and effort into making the blog easy to use or pretty.  I'm throwing all of this on a blog so I don't clutter up our Facebook page with too much stuff.  As the experiment continues I will post some recipes I like and fill you in with the details of my quest.  I'm not sure if anyone really cares or not.  If you want me to post some recipes (or post your own) just fire away.

The final result I'm looking for is better food for Matador. If you want to suggest anything, I will give it an honest shot to see how it can work in the restaurant.  

To all the veggie heads out there.... Thank you very much for everything you have do so far.  As soon as I posted I was going to do this I was bombarded with messages of support and offers for help.  Thank you in advance for letting me use you as test subjects for new ideas.