Slipping into a vegetarian mode may help you slip back into a smaller clothing size.
It's an easy and healthful way to shed those extra 5 to 10 pounds that more than half of us put on between Thanksgiving and New Year's.
Being naturally lower in fat and cholesterol, a vegetarian diet also helps minimize associated health risks such as heart disease, high blood pressure and diabetes. And remember, fat has more than twice the number of calories per gram of either protein or carbohydrates.
Enter Lindsay Gilmour - chef, caterer, cooking teacher, singer and songwriter.
Gilmour markets her multiple personas under the name Organic Planet Productions. It was in her role as a macrobiotic chef that Gilmour was found orchestrating a recent Organic Planet Dinner Club meal from the open kitchen at Cafette in Chestnut Hill.
Hers is a club with no by-laws or dues or meetings beyond a monthly meal meant to improve the vegetarian image and promote organic foods among the many semi- and non-vegetarians attending. For those on a strict vegan diet, it's a rare dining-out option.
At the community table this night, Allison Memmo, a young and single dinner-club regular from Chestnut Hill, has joined first-timer Esther Yulsman of Blue Bell. Together they relish the ginger-spiced broth of leek, parsnip and chickpeas.
Memmo chose to be vegetarian for environmental and philosophical reasons. ``But after I became a vegetarian, health became the main issue. I never thought about how food affects the body before. I was always healthy. But now I feel 10 times better,'' Memmo said.
Married with grown children, Yulsman spent a chunk of the last 20 years cooking one way for her family and another for herself.
``It's much harder to eat well as a vegetarian than it is to just throw meat on the grill,'' said Yulsman, who acknowledges that too much vegetarian cooking is bland or plain bad.
But nothing is bland at Organic Planet dinners. Gilmour draws on a wide range of cooking techniques and ethnic seasonings to enhance the natural flavors of her food.
She's also careful to balance her meals. Diets free of animal products must be supplemented with Vitamin B-12 either in fortified foods or in tablet form. And adequate amounts of Vitamin D, calcium, iron and zinc are needed to compensate for the lack of dairy and meat products that are the primary source of those nutrients.
