Semi-Vegetarianism..

We've decided to go vegetarian.

Well, semi-vegetarian. Can you be semi-vegetarian? As someone who was staunchly vegetarian for a huge chunk of my youth, I know how infuriating that phrase can be to someone who strictly follows the 'vegetarian rules' and doesn't let a morsel of anything living pass their lips.

However, this isn't about rules. This isn't about a label, this is about a lifestyle. Realistically, we can't keep consuming meat in the way we do ('we' being the global 'we', not the Husband and I personally). We're killing the planet and we're doing it pretty quickly.

Before you roll your eyes and lump me in with the hippies and the crazies, let me assure you that this isn't going to be another earth-mother-save-the-planet type blog with advice on how to sew clothes from hemp and grow your own everything. This is just a picture of a small slice of our journey that we want to document so we can see exactly how much we screw it up while trying our best not to.

I rarely think about what my diet is doing to the planet - that is some big scale thinking. I'm usually much further down the intellectual scale, thinking about what I'm putting in my mouth for dinner and when dinner is over, I'm thinking about what nice thing I can have and exactly how much I can have so I'm just straddling the fine line between satisfying my craving and dipping into some unhealthy shame and guilt before bed.

Who has time to wonder if the chicken I just ate had a good life?

So let's take it down a notch. Forget the big picture (not forever though, that shit is going to catch up to us eventually) and I'll try to focus on just me. Dial it into a selfish, macro close up of my life and my life only.

I don't want heart disease, especially since I already have heart issues. I don't want to be overweight and struggle to lose even a few pounds. I don't want my kids to grow up pumped full of hormones and antibiotics because what happens when the antibiotics stop working and they get sick? I'm not trying to demonise meat or meat-eaters - it isn't the only cause of these things, and you can eat meat in a healthy and sustainable way, but the reality is, most of us don't.

I buy free range eggs, but not free range chicken. I don't think about what else is included in the sausages when they say they are only 43% pork. We don't eat much beef, but when we do, it's not free range, it's not sustainable and it's not cheap.

So this is an experiment. An experiment into a semi-vegetarian, mostly-meat free, sustainable diet that will hopefully be good for us, good for our space and good for our kids (when we eventually have some).

I don't know how this will go and I don't know how we'll do. We'll try to grow some veggies to cut down costs but I don't exactly have a green thumb - who knows, maybe I'll luck out and manage to grow more than just spring onions this year. We'll finish the meat we have in the freezer (I'm not into wasting food!) and then we'll only eat the fish that Husband catches spearfishing. We might invest in some homelike beef for the freezer, though probably not, as like I said, we don't eat a huge amount of beef.

This will be hard, and at times I'm sure we'll want to 'cheat' and have a Big Mac, but we're really going to try.

It's going to be an interesting journey, so wish us luck!