Why go vegetarian
For those who don’t know 6 months ago I decided I wanted to try going full vegetarian. This is my brain was going to be a new lifestyle, one that would carry me for many years. The truth is 6 months is all I could manage.
Let me first start with my original reasons for going full vegetarian. There are a few contributing factors.
- Being ignorant to where my food comes from, the conditions the animals are kept and not wanting to contribute to bad animal practices.
- Wanting to be healthier.
But the main reason is the biggest and probably the worst one. 6 months ago was a lot worse than it is now which put me in a bad state. One evening when Rach was at work and Daisy asleep. I heard people talking about this Seaspiracy documentary on Netflix and thought I would educate myself on the subject. As Rach and I were already cutting back on meat and fish for the first two reasons it made sense to look into it more.
The truth is my mental state being as it was the documentary hit me a lot harder than I expected prompting me to have a full blow crisis of self whilst throwing out all non-vegetarian food and completely rewriting my meal plans.
Looking back this was indeed a rash decision but Rach being the star she is went along with my hyper fixation.
To clarify my reason were, not wanting to contribute to bad animal practices, wanting to be healthier and a mental breakdown. Probably not the best start.
How it went
So, Rach and I wrote our vegetarian meal plans and set out to try some new recipes to try. The issue we immediately found after cooking some of these new recipes is Daisy and I are terrible with vegetables so full vegetarian meals were pretty much immediately scrapped.
Eventually, we found our groove and started simply replacing or removing the meat from meals we know we already enjoy. Creamy chicken and broccoli bake became a mixed greens bake with asparagus, kale and peas. Homemade pizza with pepperoni just became a Margherita and so on.
It was quite astonishing how well the initial few months went but eventually, the cracks started to show. Feeding Daisy became more of a challenge as she didn’t like some meals which ended with us cooking multiple versions of a dish taking up more time than we would have liked. The impact on the wider family and they tried to accommodate our new vegetarian diet was something I hadn’t taken into consideration.
This leads me up to the last few weeks. Our love and excitement for the vegetarian food we are eating is almost gone and the lack of enthusiasm to find new meals is practically zero. Rach and I sat down and reevaluated the situation. We came up with a middle ground that addressed the main logical reasons for animal care and eating healthier. So we decided to make use of the local farm shop. That week I went to the farm shop and picked up some beef mince. The meats were all local and from this farm and the abattoir was also very local keeping down any transportation and climate change concerns. That week I made what had to be the best lasagna I have ever created and that was it I was back on the meat.
Well, we are still going to be predominantly vegetarian but also have a meat meal maximum of 2-3 nights a week. This change has already given back so many of the recipes we loved. A chicken casserole being one and lasagna the other. Just the addition of these two meat meals has made us appreciate our food more, given us a new lease of enthusiasm for our food and made us think more about where the food has come from.
Going forward I will still avoid most fast-food restaurants as I can’t trust where the food has come from. There will exceptions of course. My birthday Domino’s being one of them but finding this middle ground has managed to lessen my concerns about where the food is coming from and ease my conscience a bit.
The main takeaway from this is don’t make rash decisions that will impact your whole family when in a bad mental state. The second takeaway is to identify when you are in this mental state. The third takeaway is to find the middle ground and the last takeaway is to cut back on the takeaways.
That's it for this week. I hope you have a positive and productive week.
Cya next week.