Meat as food?

We love food in our household. Roscoe loves a salad for dinner every night (me too!). Little Rooster has always loved breastfeeding (with such frequency I sometimes wondered if I was producing enough milk - bad thought!) and now digs most foods I've introduced (avocado, banana, sweet potato and prunes are favorites of his).

I have been limiting my meat intake for 11 years now, eating tuna, salmon, and, every couple of years, some chicken. Don't worry, I'm not some hyper-vegetarian who is going to lecture you about the dangers of eating meat. I became a "vegetarian" because meat is rather yucky tasting and I couldn't stand the way most of it is raised. Roscoe does eat meat, just very little at home. It's not that I ban meat in our home (maybe pork...), we just don't buy it or desire to prepare it. Well, things will be changing as we both want Rooster to be a thriving little boy by eating meat.

So now I need to figure out the best way to introduce meat into our household. It's been years since I have cooked anything other than chicken and even then I had to check the Internet and call my mom to make sure I was doing it right. The first major question is should I begin to eat meat again to set a good example for my son? Probably. Others are what type of meats, how should I cook them, do I only buy organic, how often do we eat them, etc.

I happened across the book Real Food for Mother and Baby by Nina Planck at the library. Excellent timing! I think I glanced through her first book, Real Food, awhile back and liked the basic idea: purge processed foods from your diet* and stick to foods nature intended. We basically already do this with some exceptions (soy milk {or juice as she refers to it}, cereals, granola bars, popsicles).

The ideas I've gathered from her that we will implement is to drink cow milk not soy/almond/rice "juices" (I may even try raw milk -this freaks my husband out) and meats from animals fed according to their natural diets plus hormone-free and antibiotic-free. She mentions that organic doesn't necessarily mean any of the above and to read all labels closely. I learned that my aversion to the taste of meat may be because of the quality of meat I was consuming, so by sticking with "real" meat it should be quite tasty. Hmmm, sounds tempting especially combined with all the nutrition packed in meat that she discusses.

I have much more to learn, of course, but I have a good place to start. Updates to come. Until then I will be perusing my recipe box to see what I can make with meat.

*diet will always refer to overall normal food intake during the day, not to a calorie-restricted food intake like it is often referred to. I don't believe in "dieting" - eat right, eat in moderation, and exercise .