Hidden Treasures of Knowledge

Look at me! Three posts in a row! It's a three-peat, though probably not the most impressive one in history. So this post has a bit of a back story (is that hyphenated?) to it. My wife and I were reading the Doctrine and Covenants a few months ago (if I haven't already mentioned it, we're Mormons). We consider the Doctrine and Covenants to be scripture, like the Bible and the Book of Mormon. Anyway, back to the story, we were reading what we call the Word of Wisdom. It's basically the reason that Mormons don't drink coffee or alcohol, don't smoke, and don't do drugs. There are lots of don't but there are also some important do's there. Here is the section that caught our eye:

And again, verily I say unto you, all wholesome herbs God hath ordained for the constitution, nature, and use of man—
Every herb in the season thereof, and every fruit in the season thereof; all these to be used with prudence and thanksgiving.

Okay, pretty good so far. Use fruits, vegetables, and wholesome herbs.

Yea, flesh also of beasts and of the fowls of the air, I, the Lord, have ordained for the use of man with thanksgiving; nevertheless they are to be used sparingly;

Alright, meat is there for the use of man, but you should use it sparingly. Now here is where I usually stopped paying attention, but there is a little more on the subject of meat in the next verse.

And it is pleasing unto me that they should not be used, only in times of winter, or of cold, or famine.

Hmmm. Okay, so if I read that right, the Lord says that it's better if you don't eat meat, except in more extreme circumstances. So we read this, and neither of us were particularly happy about it, since we both love meat. We were both raised in families where dinner was based around the meat. We frequently say things like "everything's better with bacon." Regardless of all of that, we both read that and felt like we should try to live a little closer to what that said. With that in mind, we decided to try being seasonal vegetarians.

We read this in the middle of winter, so we figured that we had some time to gather some good vegetarian recipes and figure out how to do it healthily, but more quickly than we expected our meat days ran out. We actually built up to it slowly so that by the time that our official day came we were already basically eating vegetarian anyway. Honestly it has gone really well, much better than I expected. Regardless, we are several weeks into the experiment and we are loving it.

I was going to tell this whole story in one post, but I hate massive walls of text, so I'll pick this up tomorrow. Just remember these things: Word of Wisdom, we like meat, we are now vegetarian, and the youtube video is rabbits eating because I knew a guy who referred to all vegetables with disdain as "rabbit food."