Vegetarian Triumph - not!

Being away on holiday encourages one to make some strange decisions. And one of the decisions I made whilst stranded 'pon the top of Exmoor was that I should return to being vegetarian. Whether this was because we shared our holiday with friends who are vegetarian, nay vegan even, or whether it was the near-kidnap of a lost lamb I do not know, but I do know I carried home with me a determined resolve to be vegetarian. And I have bought two books and a vegetarian cooking magazine just to prove it. I even went on the Vegetarian Society website which was very informative and only a teensy smidgeon evangelical.

So last Saturday, I started a week where I endeavoured to eat only veggie food. Andy said, 'I'll be veggie, too; it'll be good for my health,' and then he pulled the kind of a face that suggested he'd rather die young and happy and stuffed with a nice Cumberland sausage than old and miserable choking on lentils.

I said, 'You don't have to.'
He said, 'But I want to.'
I thought, I am not convinced, dear husband, because you have a meat-eating gene therewithin, but for the sake of ease, what with me being main chef and back to work this week, I decided he could join me for the inaugural veggie ride. (Although I did give him tuna sandwiches half way through the week because I started to feel sorry for him.)

Anyway, this morning I was feeling pretty triumphant that I'd managed a whole week without roasting a chicken. Actually, thinking about it, it's the chicken thing that's done it for me. Seeing Misses Miggins, Pumphrey and Slocombe going about their daily business whilst I am, at the same time stuffing a chicken, or dismembering a chicken, or dicing a chicken, well, it all seemed very wrong. I kept thinking, 'Miggins looks like this under her glorious ginger feathers. All pink and dimpled and puckered.' And I wouldn't dream of eating any of our egg laying ladies, so why would I eat one of their non-egg laying relatives? It suddenly became very hypocritical.

I know some people keep 'egg birds' and 'meat birds' and to be honest, I was almost convinced we would do the same, when the land came our way and we could expand our self-sufficiency. But now I think that a chicken is a chicken is a chicken. And chickens are all the same under the feather and should be treated thusly. I rest my case, m'lud.

So, a whole week of veggie eating! Aha!! But then...

...I kid you not, I woke in the wee small hours this morning and thought, 'I put Worcestershire sauce in the homemade baked beans...damn!'

And why damn? Because Worcestershire sauce has anchovy in it, doesn't it? And anchovy is fish, isn't it? And fish has a face and is therefore beyond the veggie radar. Damn, damn...DAMN!!!!

You see, it's little things like that which will catch you out. You've got to be ON YOUR GUARD ALL THE TIME.

Still, onwards and upwards. Andy has planted some melon seeds (vegetarian), which have grown about a foot in the last week. Well, okay, maybe not a foot, but given they were only planted last weekend they've shot up PDQ; whether their seedling enthusiasm goes on to produce melons remains to be seen, but with the glorious weather we've been having, I won't be surprised if we are knee deep in melon sorbet by the end of the summer.

And it's bee-keeping part three tomorrow, my two Marina Lewycka books arrived yesterday for a weekend of indulgent reading activity and McVities Dark Chocolate Digestive Biscuits are suitable for vegetarians - hurrah!!