Giving it up!

Eating a barbecued pork chop on a campsite in Hawes in 1990 was the last time I agreed to eat meat. Whilst chewing the grainy texture the realisation that I did not like it, nor any other meat, was an epiphany! I, like most people had accepted meat as the substantial part of any meal but what were the options? I decided to live a meat free diet for a month and see how I got on.  The options, in the beginning, were a lot of jacket potatoes and copious amounts of ratatouille which I made on a cauldron like scale and froze in portions.  My husband called it "mush" as he continued to eat the meat I cooked for him.

Eating a piece of chorizo at a party in 2013 was the last time I ate meat, without agreeing to.  This has happened several times over the last 24 years.  There was the time in a well known department store restaurant when I ordered their vegetarian quiche only to realise, after several mouthfuls, that the red onions were in fact small cubes of ham.  At a local craft fare I ordered minestrone soup and found it loaded with ham hock.  Then, at a summer barbecue a drunken friend decided it would be good fun if I tried a sausage.  It got as far as my lips before I was able to stop him!  My best friend, herself a pescatarian, was caught ladling fish stock into the mushroom risotto she was cooking for me.  I could go on!  

There is the well known joke that it's okay for a vegetarian to have a ham sandwich as long as it's wafer thin ham!  Comedy comes from real life and it has been suggested that I "pick off the ham" from a Hawaiian pizza and that the pieces of meat in a casserole offered to me "are only tiny!" 

However, once the decision was made, I never wanted to go back ..... No, not even for a bacon sandwich!