I have never lived like a vegetarian

This post was started on Wednesday 13 January. Unfortunately, due to a busy schedule, I wasn’t able to finish it until today. As it stands, I find that concluding an I Never activity with a blog post is taking me longer than I’d like. I’m considering a change in the format to decrease the reporting time and focus more on the activity itself. To be continued.

For now, enjoy this month’s I Never!

I don’t envy people who choose to be a vegetarian, but near the end of last year, Lena told me this would be a good I Never. I didn’t really see a reason not to do it, so here we are.

Now, I’m not planning on going the rest of my life without meat. After all, this is about the experience, not the life choice. I’m not even doing the entire month, basically because there’s two people in our household, and I don’t want to burden Lena with going an entire month with relatively little meat.

A week it is. I initially planned on starting the Monday morning, the first week of the year, but we had so much meat still in our fridge, that we would have to throw some of that away, which would be a waste.

It wasn’t until today that our meat supply more or less ran out, so I started today at 18:00. Why not start at 0:00? Mainly because there’s a vegetarian eating at our place tonight, and I don’t want to miss this opportunity to get a head start. And I guess it will be more fun to be awake when I complete the challenge and can eat meat again.

One thing to note is that my vegetarian diet will include no meat, but also no fish or bugs. If it’s an animal, I won’t eat it. Milk and eggs on the other hand, I will consume, because though I respect vegan’s life choices, I see no point in doing that.

During the challenge, I will maintain a log of what’s going on. The log won’t be published until I’m completely done, but it should give you an idea of the timeline.

Day 1, 21:47

The first few hours went by as well as they could, I suppose. We had guests for dinner, one of whom is a vegetarian, so Lena made a vegetarian curry, which was delicious. But I was also faced with my first challenge, because I was about to get some prawn crackers when Lena reminded me of what I was about to do.

I guess it’s harder than I thought.

Day 4, 12:32

So far so good. Last Thursday (day 2), we ate at some friends, one of whom is also a vegetarian, so that wasn’t so difficult either.

Yesterday (day 3) was even easier. We had leftovers from Wednesday, so I ate more of the curry, while Lena went for some nasi. Lena wasn’t satisfied with nasi alone, so later we ordered a half/half pizza: tuna on her half, vegetables on mine. I may have gotten a slight bit of tuna on my side, but eh… Nothing’s ever perfect.

Aftermath

It’s quite long after I did the actual I Never, so, the details are a bit hazy. I do remember that we bought vegetarian schnitzel with spinach, of which I ate two on two separate days. Basically, it highlighted the problem I have with vegetarian meat-products: they all taste the same. Even this schnitzel, which could have tasted like spinach, tasted like meat-replacement, which is a real shame.

In the end, it’s clear that a vegetarian lifestyle is not for me. Besides having to miss out on a lot of very tasty things (yum, spare ribs), you’re constantly checking everything for what it contains and it almost always tastes the same. That said, I am not against substituting meat for non-meat in things sauces, like the curry I ate. That taste is all about the sauce anyway, so I didn’t feel like missing out much.

2 thoughts on “I have never lived like a vegetarian

  1. AvatarHeidi

    Insects usually count as veggie, though. I also have to disagree on the checking all the time to see what’s in the product. Maybe the first weeks, I’ll give you that. After that, you’ll be fine and then you’ll only have to check when you want to buy something you didn’t check before. The first weeks are quite hard to get used to the regime, since they make you realise what sorts of fish and meat you were eating before without even noticing. Mostly in prepackaged food. There is delicious veggy stuff that doesnt taste exactly like boring spinach schnitzel: the more expensive, the more actual taste the products have. For instance, the mushroom burgers with honey are great (though I know you don’t like shrooms: you won’t taste ‘m alot). The beetroot burgers need some improvement, but are okay. The newer products like smoked veggie-sausage are also awesome. I felt your pain when you weren’t allowed to eat fish. Next time when you come over, have some delicious pescetarian home-made creamy salmon tagliatelle of Roderick! =D

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