This morning I woke to two news articles about tainted meat on my Google home page, and once again praised my good luck that I prefer to be vegetarian. But I know most people aren’t, and thought about a blog I visited yesterday through a lucky click on my Stumble Upon toolbar.

First, the meat articles. They are Chemical in tainted pet food turns up on hog farms, and E. coli’s trail ends in Merced California … Not very appetizing, is it?

So here’s the solution: great vegetarian meals. The kind that make you feel like you’re not missing anything. That’s what I found during my visit to Vegetarian Meal Plans, a blog by Cassie Young that’s been serving up great vegetarian meal plan ideas and recipes, along with a serving of practical advice, since last December. The recipes with their colorful close-up photographs of her culinary creations are simple enough to be do-able, but complex enough to impress me. The author tells us this is what she’s been eating at her home so I’m sure we can do it at ours.

I work in a pizza restaurant that serves up meat-laden pizzas all day long. Very few come in asking for our veggie combo, and I wonder why, with all the publicity about tainted meat, so many people have a problem with making the break to more healthy, natural foods.

For me, it was a decision I made early-on in my life; I decided as a teenager that pillaging animals for their flesh was not for me. But most people eat meat as if their life depends on it. I wonder if it is caused by government propaganda that tells us meat is one of the four food groups.

Meat is not necessary for human survival. Living without it is a blessing, and is the best way to avoid tainted meat that is becoming more common in the 21st century.

Vegetarian Meal Plans deserves a link in my blogroll on the right-hand side of this blog.