Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

For a number of years I didn’t eat meat, just fish. I decided pretty young, probably 11 or 12 that I didn’t really like the taste or the thought of what meat was. I didn’t like to see or smell raw meat and for quite sometime I was a pain for family and friends. Then I went off to University and found that I probably ate better than most of the people I lived with. I was pretty good at making vegetarian food with the help of my trusty vegetarian recipe book (which I still have amongst my collection nearly twenty years later!). I also found that it was a good inspiration for my art. At the time there were lots of news stories about children not understanding where their food came from; not knowing what a chicken or a pig looked like – can you imagine? I didn’t want to tell people that they shouldn’t eat meat but I did think they should know what it was before it gets wrapped in cellophane and put in a freezer. They should know how the animal they are about to eat has lived its life and how it’s been killed.

Then at some point in my twenties, fuelled by alcohol ( isn’t it always) I decided that at 3am there was nothing I wanted more than a chicken korma. So that was it – my pescetarian ways ended and I became a meat eater. I was a fussy meat eater – the thought and smell of bacon always troubled me and don’t get me started on trying to combine chicken with pasta! Overtime I learnt to cook the Great British tradition of meat and two veg along with meat curries and stir fries – tongue firmly pressed to the roof of my mouth trying not to smell what I was handling. Meat became a key component in nearly every evening meal (and sometimes lunches too) that me and ‘the husband’ (a lapsed vegetarian) ate. It seemed to be taking over and in doing so it was leeching away all the enjoyment I used to get from cooking – I just didn’t realise it at the time.

When I was first diagnosed with MS I read about some of the different recommended diets that may (or may not) help. None clinically proven, well not in my mind anyway, but they were enough to give me food for thought (see what I did there? my little play on words… ). A Mediterranean diet was the obvious one being recommended; oily fish, lean meat, plenty of fresh veg. There were a couple of others two though, ones encouraging a ‘cleaner’ way of eating. Throwing those processed meals in the back of the freezer away (we never really bought them anyway) and making everything fresh so that all those E numbers and long chemical names become a thing of the past. Another recommendation was cutting out meat and dairy too, eating a diet full of fresh veg, pulses, lentils and fish. Sort of my old diet, only healthier. That was 2013 and though the change wasn’t a drastic one – one I don’t think I even realised I made at the time – I started to cut down on the amount of meat I cooked.

By the beginning of 2015 maybe just two or three evening meals a week included meat. I was feeling healthier because of it. People seemed confused that we could have an evening meal that didn’t include meat but it was so easy. It started to occur to me then that I really would like to cut out meat altogether but could it work – one pescatarian and one meat eater that didn’t like fish? I wasn’t thinking of it from just an MS / health thing anymore either. Maybe it was all the yoga, but I felt more in tune with myself and dare I say it the world around me. Passing animals in the fields near where we live made it increasingly difficult for me to be prepared to eat them when I got home.

In the end it was easy. The husband and I went to dinner with six friends – four meat eaters, a pescetarian and a vegan. I ordered off the veggie/vegan menu as nothing ‘meat’ appealed to me and actually that menu was a lot more interesting. The husband went for meat but said after he’d had ‘food envy’ when he saw our none-meat choices. We spoke on the way home about how impressed we were with our friends commitment to being vegan – it can’t always have been easy. We also spoke about our love of animals – this is around the time that Cecil the lion was shot and other similarly horrifying stories were coming to the forefront of the news. The following morning I was practicing yoga, once again thinking about the change I wanted to make – in fact it was all I’d thought about since getting home the evening before. ‘The husband’ appeared just as I was rolling up my mat – a little dishevelled after a night of indigestion affecting his sleep, a side affect of his meat consumption. ‘I’ve been thinking’ he told me, ‘I want to give up eating meat’.

So there you have it – six months ago we gave up eating meat and I feel the best I have felt for a number of years. I love cooking again, I love the freedom it’s opened up to me since meat and two veg became a thing of the past. My kitchen is one of my favourite places, it’s a place of fun where I make weird and sometimes wonderful (sometimes not so wonderful) creations. I won’t be making any New Year resolutions today – I’ve already made the big change I wanted to make and I don’t believe in waiting until January 1st to make a changes. If you want to make a change, whatever it is, just do it – we did and we have no regrets.