I’m Craving A Roast Beef Sunday Dinner

28 Oct 2018

I’m Craving A Roast Beef Sunday Dinner

I haven’t eaten meat since July.

I realise that’s a pretty underwhelming statement but I feel the need to lay the groundwork because I’m not sure I’ve mentioned on the blog that I’ve gone ‘pescatarian’. (I use the quotation marks because sometimes all the labels are bloody exhausting right?)

At the end of our NC500 road trip back in July, I told G I was giving up meat. He wasn’t particularly surprised because it had been a long time coming. I was never a big meat eater, the environmental factors and – the thing that pushed me over the edge – animal ethics.

To be perfectly honest, my biggest motivator was, despite my dislike for a 'label', it felt easier to have a label rather than some version of the following: ‘I’d prefer not to eat meat on the whole but yes okay, I do have a weakness for chorizo so don’t mind that occasionally, and I can enjoy roast chicken but any other type of chicken makes me squeamish so don’t give me that. Oh but I probably will be much more relaxed when it comes to Christmas day so no need to worry about that….’

Not really what people want when they ask if you have any dietary requirements ya know? Plus, it made me feel like a hypocrite.

So yeah, I gave up meat but still eat the occasional fish for convenience. What with living with a meat eater, being a somewhat regular traveller and some restaurants still being awful when it comes to decent (or indeed any) vegetarian options; eating fish creates a little ease and compromise.

It hasn’t really been a big deal. I just removed meat from a diet that was already nearly meat-free. I barely noticed.

But now.

Now, my friends, I am craving a roast beef Sunday dinner.

It has come out of no where. One minute I was minding my own business, skipping through the crunchy leaves and enjoying the delicious autumn season. And the next I was slapped in the face with the dawning realisation that one of my favourite autumn activities (a Sunday roast by the fire in my favourite pub) wasn’t going to be quite the same. Call me fussy, but halloumi with all the traditional roast trimmings (a common option on Sunday menus) doesn’t work in my opinion. Like halloumi and gravy? Come on.

And then, after several months of not missing meat, all I wanted to bloody eat was a roast beef Sunday dinner.

AND I CAN’T GET IT OUT MY HEAD.

Like I have been thinking about that roast beef Sunday dinner everyday for over a week now. I seem to be slowly reverting back to a child who has been told she cannot have something and now wants it infinitely more. I feel very mature.

G told me to have one on the basis that we ‘wouldn’t tell’ but the person we need to ‘not tell’ is myself. I don’t really care about anyone else’s opinions on the matter. But it will be quite hard to hide it from me when I’m the one who will be shovelling beef into my mouth. I feel I’d probably notice no?

Out of curiosity I googled this dilemma and then realised that going down that particular internet rabbit-hole was probably a bad idea. But if you want to see some meat-eating folk getting really irate over lentils, it’s the place to go.

Essentially what’s going on here is that my brain is having an argument with my taste buds. And I’m sat in the middle wondering whether I should have picked the label ‘flexitarian’ instead. Except I don’t like labels.

So that’s what currently going in my life guys. I’m having an existential crisis over a roast dinner.

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