Veg!

Sometime during my third year at university, I began to feel like I ought to be vegetarian. This was not something I wanted to be. Consequently, I focussed on eating plenty of meat and hoped the feeling might pass. (I was, at the time, also growing my hair long and I may have had a subconscious fear of becoming Neil from the Young Ones.)

In April 1988, I stopped resisting and gave up eating meat. Officially, I was vegetarian for eighteen and a half years, until Christmas 2006, but during the last few years I would occasionally sneak some fish into my diet. During that long time of being vegetarian, I came to support the intellectual arguments for eating meat but, in a reversal of the original process, the logic of vegetarianism didn't stop me feeling like I wanted to eat meat again.

And so, on Boxing Day, 2006, while I sat at the dining table playing scrabble, I found myself picking at the cold turkey that was still there from lunch. It tasted amazing. As much as anything, it was the texture of meat that I missed. I found I was very happy to be eating it again.

It was a couple of years after that, around May 2009, that I started to get interested in the Atkins diet and switched to a low-carb diet. That all worked pretty well for a while but over the last couple of years, especially when I'm only catering for myself, I have a tendency to just eat meat. I'd be surprised if I average one portion of fruit and veg a day, let alone five.

A few weeks ago, though, Abi decided she didn't want to eat animals anymore, so I've dusted down my old vegetarian cookbooks and started to buy a bit more fruit and veg. To be honest - and as you can see from the photo - I haven't really got myself organised yet. Still, as long as I avoid the pasta, potatoes and rice on my plate, I don't think it'll do me too much harm to get a bit more fruit and veg into my diet.