No More Meat?!?

...or in the words of my husband "YOU'RE giving up pepperoni?!?".

I only remember the date because it was so close to our anniversary and it was my maternal grandfather's birthday...Monday October 15, 2007. It was my first 'meat free' day.

So, I'll start from the beginning. October 12th was just like any other day except that I was excited because it was our anniversary and we were going to have dinner at a restaurant we had both loved (they used to have the BEST filet with crab meat & bearnaise sauce). Anyway, I was on my lunch break and had decided to take a look at some of my "have to look at daily" websites, one of which is cuteoverload.com. While getting my daily fill of cute puppies, kitties, etc., I noticed an ad off to the side BEGGING me to take a quiz and find out my "Chimpanality". I, being the primate lover that I am, happily obliged and was taken to the Humane Society of the United States' website.

After taking the quiz (by the way, my chimpanality matched Kitty -- who do you match?), I decided to take a look around and came across the Factory Farming campaign section. Then I came across the videos. Now, in my head I'm telling myself "Don't watch them. You'll only upset yourself. I'm telling you! DON'T WATCH THEM!". I didn't listen and I watched them. I'm not going to go into detail about them but I was crying by the time I was done watching. That night, we went to the restaurant and, with the videos fresh in my mind, I still ordered the filet with crab meat, etc. When the food finally came, I played with it a lot and took bites here and there. Between what was in my head and the general suckiness of the food, I couldn't eat it. And I promise that it wasn't just that I was thinking about the videos. The food was bad...hubby's seafood was barely cooked and smelled "off" and the steak I had was burnt and very tough. We both agreed to never go there again. Anyway, two days later was the last time I had meat.

At this time, I was still a "closet vegetarian". I didn't know how to tell anyone! During the week, I had continued to cook vegetarian meals, but my husband never realized it. That Thursday (Oct. 18th), my husband, my best friend and I decided to go down to Atlantic City to watch the Sands hotel be imploded. We went to dinner and I still hadn't said anything. They decide that we should get egg rolls for an appetizer (they had meat in them) but I didn't say a word...I wasn't going to eat them anyway. The appetizer gets served:

"Hey Jenn, why don't you have some?"
"No thank-you, I'm fine."
"Come on! They're really good!"
"Nah, that's ok."
"There's plenty for all of us!"
...with my face buried in my menu..."Um, I don't eat meat anymore."
...in unison now..."YOU WHAT?!?"

I think you could have heard a pin drop. They were absolutely shocked! So, after some teasing and begging, my husband says "Well, birthday's and Christmas' are going to be a real pain in the ass!". I turned and said to him "What? Were you going to buy me a crate of meat for Christmas???".

So, now it's been almost 5 months and I'm still going strong...and my husband and best friend STILL tease me all the time! They're both very supportive but I think that there's that glimmer of hope that I'll re-join the ranks of the meat eaters. I really don't think that's going to happen.

My next topic will be about becoming more "green". It's still a work in progress so it may be a short post.

Till next time...