Don't chop the dinosaur daddy.

In 2010, I decided that meat just didn't taste as good anymore and I got bored with being easy to feed so I told my Mum that I was becoming a vegetarian. She looked at me in disbelief and said "okay" with a little smirk on my face. My Mum was once a fruitarian (she only ate fruit and nuts) so I don't know why she thought I wasn't serious. Anyway, for the first few months I ate white meat (chicken and fish) so I wasn't a vegetarian but I decided that this would be the easiest way to become one. Then one day I felt ready and decided to completely delete meat from the menu. I was a full-time vego for probably two and a bit years and absolutely loved it. Mum didn't mind either because she was never a really big meat eater so it didn't really bother her. If I was lucky Mum would have a new vegetarian recipe for me to try when I got home from school, experimenting with not using meat but replacing it with vegetables instead. I remember when she made vegetarian Sheppard's pie one cold, wintery night and it was so good!

The one thing I dislike about being vego is that you now have to let people know about what you do and don't eat because meat is such a huge component in most dishes you can't just push it to the side and eat the good bits (veggies). I feel like such a nuisance when I stay somewhere and have to let whoever is cooking aware that I don't eat meat and then along come all the questions. Why don't you eat meat? Is it the animals? Do you eat eggs and fish? Etc, etc. I don't eat meat because I don't want to basically, of course I care about animals but the fact that people eat them doesn't bother me a lot, I try to make it bother me because then I could have a good answer for people when they ask these questions. I am not a fussy vegetarian and can eat around meat if it's in like a curry or something and I don't mind preparing dishes with meat in them. What you put in your mouth is your choice, who am I to say don't eat that piece of beef because it once was a calf. Now the eggs question I don't really understand. Yes chickens come from eggs but only if they have been getting it on with the rooster, so if there is no rooster then there is no chicken and an egg is simply a yolk and white. In other words, yes I eat eggs. The fish question is just as confusing. I think when you are vegetarian you don't eat anything with a face, no matter where it lives, if it has a face you don't eat it. Fish have faces so I don't think you should eat them and besides they have a specific term for fish eating vegetarians; a 'pescetarian', which is what I am now. After being vegetarian for quite a long time I realised that I wasn't getting enough nutrients from the food I was eating because I was a lazy vego and didn't really pay attention to what certain vegetables contained but rather just ate them because they tasted good. So I decided to start eating fish again. Now I am going to contradict myself and say that I do call myself a vegetarian rather than a pescetarian to try and avoid the question of "what is that?", rather than explaining I just answer "yes" to the fish question.

I am thinking that I now I am living independently I should become even more fussy and call myself a 'vegan' mainly for the health benefits but also because all of the vegans that I follow on Instagram post the most amazing looking food. Do you think I should do it? Food is generally more expensive as a vegan, as I have discovered when making a few vegan recipes, this I don't understand because you're cutting so much stuff out of your diet that it would only make sense that it would be less expensive then eating normally. But the health benefits, including glowing skin, thin body, and generally being healthy and happy are really persuasive so I think I shall give it a go. If you're vegan, please help me out with some simple tips? I'll keep you updated with my progress!

Love, love, love.