We've been eating a lot more vegetables over the past few months. I used to think that a meal had to have meat for it to be a meal, but as we've become better at cooking, it's become easier to make good recipes with mostly vegetables.

The vegetable box we receive also gives us plenty of things to cook that don't have to be accompanied by meat, and I'm trying new fruits and vegetables with each box we receive.

I've made a conscious decision to try to minimize the amount of meat I eat and there are some benefits of that. For example, I may live longer by eating less meat.

A minor benefit of eating less meat is that cooking less raw meat means that there are fewer times when animal blood gets on our counter top and fewer bacteria in the kitchen.

The animal food industry has a huge impact on the environment due to all the resources it takes to feed animals so we can eat them, and also treats many animals inhumanely.

We have a couple pretty good cookbooks that we use that have many meat-free recipes. Stir-fry with vegetables and sometimes tofu is a favorite of ours. We've also found some recipes online for chili, veggie sandwich, and mushroom and potato soup.

Eating some meals without meat does take some effort to find new recipes that don't include meat, but for me it has been worthwhile and for many other people who have reasons for eating less meat.