"Recovering" vegetarians and vegans

[Toasted]

I've been a vegetarian for about 20 years. First because I just hated meat. My parents made me eat it. I thought it was so gross. Growing up in ME and seeing dead deer and even bear hanging from my relatives trees, getting ready to be butchered was too much for me to take. Then I got married and lived with my husband in a small house on his parent's beef farm. Hearing the calfs cry for their mothers when they were separated was heartbreaking every year. I'm not writting this to get an emotional response- that's just the way it is. The baby cow's would cry and their mother's on the other side of the road would call back to them. For days. Some people can deal with this and some people can't. I can't. I don't judge other people for eating meat. I think it's a choice. I have children and if they decide to eat meat when they're older, well, I'll have to be ok with it. I do think though, that everyone who eats meat should visit a slaughter house or a farm and see the whole process. None of my meat eating friends will go to the farm even though I've invited them several times. I can't say I blame them.

[dexygus]

Funny, I just wrote about my recent cravings on my blog. I became an ovo-lacto vegetarian some time after college. It was when I got my first pet, my cat Gussy. I never had a relationship with an animal before. He had a distinct personality, and I could no longer think of animals as anonymous creatures put on this planet for our benefit.

The vegetarianism lasted about 5 years. I had a lapse while visiting Europe in 2002. I started with fish and seafood in Rome, Florence and Venice, and by the time I was in Vienna, I was eating wurst. It was incredible, by the way. When I returned home it was difficult to go back to vegetarianism, so I compromised, and kept fish and seafood in my diet. That's how it's been until now. I'm actually at a crossroads right now. For some reason I've been having intense meat cravings, mainly for chicken, and it's been very difficult. I always knew I was a carnivore at heart, and I knew I would eventually eat meat again. Is that time now? I don't know. I'll tell you one thing. I'll be in Paris in 3 weeks, and that may be my downfall.

Edited February 13, 2005 by dexygus (log)

[tcavallo]

Well I'll add my story here, since I have mentioned my conversion from time to time.

I was vegan for nearly 9 years. I was fortunate in that I was able to do a lot of traveling in my formative years. Even then much of it centered around the food to be eaten; I often went well out of my way to eat at every vegetarian/vegan restaurant I could in a city. I never felt that I was missing out at the time, but as I grew older and got more "into" food, both cooking and eating, I started to realize the limits of the diet. It became especially trying to travel, not only because of the difficulty of maintaining the diet, but also because I knew I couldn't fully experience or appreciate the culture of a place without experiencing the food... all of it.

Somewhere along the line there must have been a shift in values, but I couldn't really say exactly when I changed my mind. I must confess that reading Tony Bourdain and his rants against veganism had some effect. It was in Iceland this past Spring that I started slipping a bit, and though I had to ease myself into it, by October I was roasting chickens almost weekly, not to mention adventuring into organ meats and the like. I must say that while I still respect vegetarianism and veganism, the world of cuisine that has opened up to me since removing my dietary restrictions is enough to keep me from going back.

Not that I still don't enjoy tofu from time to time... it just tastes much better with shredded pork.