Sunday Sundries: I have not eaten meat for 18 months so let's discuss that

It's Sunday AGAIN?

Not that I have anything against Sundays, of course, but they do seem to come up awfully frequently. *Regards Sunday with some suspicion*.

Anyway! I was going to skip Sunday Sundries (I always want to call it SS but then I'm like 'NO! Nazis. Bad.) this week since I've been updating things every day on this post right here, and, you know, that's pretty much my week neatly laid out in little paragraphs and page counts. I was also going to skip it because, you know, LAZY, but but but did you see in the title that it's kind of my not-eating-meat birthday and a half (which is a thing now, apparently) so I'll ramble about that for a bit and then let you be on your way.

Oh, ALSO, it's this dude's actual birthday. It's worth a mention.

Anyway! Meat. Or, rather, the lack thereof. Let's see... It's weird when you choose to do a certain thing (or, choose NOT to do a certain thing) and people have all these questions about it, which I do choose to take as interest rather than, you know, horror and aghastness (which I fear they actually are). The most common questions, though, are without a doubt: 1) Why don't you eat meat? Don't you like it? 2) Don't you miss meat? and 3) What do you eat?

Well, that seems as good a structure as any for a post! (See what I did there?) Why don't I eat meat? I mean, I feel like I've probably covered this enough already, but I'm always stumped for an answer when someone asks me in real life because what were those moral things again? Basically, I guess in the most simple terms, I don't really think that other beings should have to die so I can eat when there are plentiful sources of other foods and also meat is so gross. Like... Really really gross. Antibiotic abuse and standing in their own shit and never seeing daylight and just no. Nope. Can't.

And don't I like meat? I love it. I think it's delicious. But I also think there are things more important than tasty things (I know, whut?) and for me, personally, it's more important that I not be involved in, you know, killing animals and stuff than to have a really good burger. But I still willingly acknowledge that burgers taste good! I feel like other people feel like I judge them for eating meat, and I don't. At all. Just because I've made this choice doesn't mean that I look down on people for not having made it, but I sometimes feel like I am being judged for not eating meat, which is pretty weird.

Don't I miss meat? I don't. I really truly don't. I mean, sure, whenever I smell bacon cooking, all of my senses go into overdrive, but bacon smells way better than it tastes anyway, and nobody ever said anything about not being able to sniff meat. But really and truly, it's not like I spend my days fantasising about burgers and then sadly go and eat some falafels or something- I just don't even consider meat as a thing I eat. It's kind of on a mental list of foods I'm just not interested in, along with peppers and mushrooms and cauliflower. And this isn't the same thing as pretending that I don't like meat, it's just not a thing that I think about because I know that I don't want to eat it. If anything, that would be my number one tip to converting to vegetarianness- as long as you know you don't want to eat it, then you won't eat it. It's really that simple.

What do I eat?

Well, this is my favourite question because MY GOD I eat so many different foods now. Seriously, as long as there was meat, I was the least adventurous eater in the whole world. I would have been happy just with some chicken and noodles and beansprouts and, you know, not much flavour. But now? You have to do something to replace meat, and flavour is the answer. I can cook a lot more things than I ever used to be able to, and I like SO many more vegetables than I ever did (asparagus is probably my favourite. Asparagus makes all the burgers in the world irrelevant to me. And aubergine is reaaaaally meaty!) The answer to the question then, really, is (apart from cakeballs) so many more things than I used to eat, and all of them are doing better things for me than meat, I suspect.

Having said that, I'll never get used to asparagus pee. NEVER.

So basically, the update is this: It's all going well, I still don't miss meat and the smell of bacon cooking is still good. The thing I probably miss the most, actually, is jelly sweets, but when you think about all the crap that goes in them anyway... It's definitely a good thing that I don't eat them. I don't really have a definitive ending here because, I don't know, nothing's over, it's just getting started, but basically a meatless life? It's not as bad as you might think, and it's much easier than I ever thought it would be. Expect another update in about six months, I guess!