Backsliding

I am carnivore! Hear me roar! MEOW! Okay, so maybe I’m not a raging meat-eater. I’m more of a fledging carnivore now. You can say that I ate my “flexitarian” ideals this week.

Hang on a second… What the hell is a flexitarian? That my dear friends, is a “flexible vegetarian.” You know, that thing that I’ve been since July.

Last summer my niece decided to become vegetarian. I was inspired to do the same. My last vegetarian experience was in high school. I went for 6 weeks without meat. I finally quit because I was tired of making my own meals.

I figured that now that I was older, and that I cooked for myself all the time anyways, that I could probably handle doing the veggie thing. I posted that I was going to become a veggiesaurus on Facebook and was immediately mocked by everyone I knew, but I was determined to prove them all wrong.

My vegetarian resolution lasted 12 hours.

The very next day I was invited to a group lunch at work. I was eager to meet my colleagues and agreed. Except that our meal was being ordered from St-Hubert’s… Which had no vegetarian options available. I certainly didn’t want to make a fuss, so I just shut my mouth and gnawed away on my chicken bones.

Later that night I did some research on vegetarianism, etc. and I came across the term, “Flexitarian” which meant that you consciously made the attempt to eat mainly vegetarian dishes, but could eat meat too. My personal stance became, “I shall eat only vegetarian in my apartment but will eat meat when I go to restaurants, etc.”

Honestly, this method worked really well. I’ve bought probably less than $50 worth of meat in the past 6 months and I’ve learned how to cook a wide variety of other veggie dishes.

However, there comes a point when you just can’t face another bowl of lentils! You can only cook beans in so many ways! You just cannot endure any more cheese! (Surprisingly, I didn’t eat that much tofu – although I did find an amazing tofu parmigana recipe!)

This past week I finally gave up and started buying meat. I have missed the variety of textures and flavours that meat has to offer. I also have missed using my recipe books, most of which are focused on meat.

That being said, I vow to make an effort to cook vegetarian once a week. (And no, this declaration is not spurred on by the fact that I still have bags of dried beans and lentils in my cupboard. Really.)