It is a difficult topic to approach. These days you'd be shocked to see a restaurant menu without a Vegan option, never mind Vegetarian. Not that I'm complaining, one of the greatest problems I faced when I decided to give up meat was how quickly every meal began to include a mega cheesy substitute, whether it be mac and cheese, cheesy stuffed mushroom or goats cheese salad. Every dish dripping in melted yellow gold of butter and cheese, because only this could make a meat-free dish delish?
As I'm sure most can agree that replacing all the meat products with Dairy products isn't going to do much good for our health. Which is one of the less obvious reasons, I think the Vegan menu option is just so appealing to the vegetarians too.
Labeling myself 'Vegan' or 'Vegetarian' is a feat in itself. It comes with so many connotations, judgements, sour faces and expectations. Truth is I fit somewhere happily amidst the two but not completely. I eat food which I deem to be good for my body and soul with the occasional cheat, slip or treat going unpunished. It is so tricky to consume products that don't give me a sense of guilt. So I do my best and get on with it.
It seems so many of us are so quick to roll our eyes when faced with an individual following a different lifestyle, deeming it a 'fad' or a 'trend', but you know what? I love it, for the first time in a long time it's really popular for folks to really consider their diet and to genuinely take an interest in what they consume, where it comes from, how it effects not only their bodies but also our whole world. So much so, that restaurants and supermarkets really have to pay attention and provide an alternative product. (I noticed recently Sainsbury's have introduced a new Vegan range and it is wonderful)
Deciding to completely rid meat from my diet wasn't something I took lightly. Having spent what felt like a lifetime to encourage myself to embrace meat as part of my diet, I finally felt as though I had it down. Learning to braise beef and roast a whole leg of lamb, to enjoy a truly sumptuous steak medium-rare still shocked my mother even after the tenth time I'd ordered it that way in front of her, bloody juices pooling on my plate as she shook her head in disbelief, not understanding where her fussy eating daughter had gone.
I tell people that my beef with meat (heh) started when I was pregnant, even though I couldn't stand even the smell of chicken or fish throughout the entirety of my pregnancy, this isn't quite the whole truth.
In fact it started when I was probably about 5 or 6, it was an eternal struggle for my mum to get me to eat much other than apples and milk. I was told I was fussy and awkward. It became a huge anxiety for me. I hated, no that isn't a strong enough word...loathed. Yes loathed going to peoples homes for dinner. Anything with a bone in was an absolute no-go and it seemed everyone in my childhood grew up eating roast chicken dinner every day of the week. Sausages, chicken, pork, lamb, eggs were just a few of my 'not eating' list. I would push food around on my plate and attempt to hide absolutely everything under mounds of mashed potato, napkins and various bits of tableware.
"you must eat so and so before you can leave the table" all the grown ups would say annoyed to the high heavens, looming over me. It was frustrating for parents I know, but it really didn't do much good.
Fast forward 22 years, after my baby was born, my appetite did not exist I merely ate what I could to keep going and provide nutrients for my newborn. I focused on healing myself the most at first, I drank 2 litres of water every day and took as many baths as I could fit in. It was during this time of healing that I thought to myself;
Hey, What if all those years of my childhood I wasn't a picky eater at all, I just didn't want to eat meat? And nobody acknowledged this?
This was the time, postpartum, I felt like my body had reset itself. Undone all of those years of hard work, just for that fussy five year old inside of me to shake her moody head and refuse to eat once more.
“You put a baby in a crib with an apple and a rabbit. If it eats the rabbit and plays with the apple, I'll buy you a new car.”
― Harvey Diamond
It became an obsessive thought, which turned into curiosity which then lead me to read up on farming and meat manufacturing, human history and our relationship with food. It all began to make sense. I find meat consumption has a very negative affect on both my mental and physical health. Not to mention our dear blue planet. I didn't like meat, the smell the feel the texture I had simply accepted that it is what is. I have no primal urge to hunt, kill and eat an animal what so ever. Eventually I embraced the reality and I just didn't like what I saw, couldn't get it off my mind in fact.
'Think occasionally of the suffering of which you spare yourself the sight.”
― Albert Schweitzer
I found cooking and making recipes without meat, but still packing a punch of flavour slightly daunting. How could I replicate a slow cooked stew? A crispy bacon butty? Worcestershire sauce, chicken stock and squidgy marshmallows all had to go...I surprised myself on how much I didn't miss those items because I was bursting with books on how to make Vegetables sing in the same way, truly. (Except bacon...there is just no alternative, sorry, I have made my peace) If I messed it up? I wasn't going to get sick or die from under-cooking a vegetable, or cross contaminating a kiwi. Just felt normal.
Now, I'm not writing this to persuade anyone, it is simply an account of my personal experience a memoir to me, myself and I. Documenting my decisions to perhaps spread the idea that what may be ok for some isn't necessarily what is good for you. The very notion that I took so long in my life to become meat-free was because I figured it was extreme and people might think I was 'awkward' once again. Bollocks to that. This is my life and my body, no one will convince me ever again to become someone I don't want to be. My diet will probably change and evolve with me as a person, and I don't feel the need to define it at all.
Gone are the days of having the obligatory one vegetarian option, usually compromising of either a stuffed mushroom or plain pasta dish. These days it's so easy to find and share recipe's, with restaurants constantly being reviewed by every day diners it seems there is a shift in what we as consumers want to accept as normal and it seems however minutely that finally, companies are responding.
