Monday, November 12, 2012

Destined to be Vegetarian?

The other day while shopping with a Vegan friend we were discussing foods that we used to, and still eat, and I began to wonder if I was meant to be vegetarian.  Perhaps this sounds strange, but growing up I hated the taste and texture of ground beef, ham, and pork.  When I ate chicken and turkey I picked them apart, and probably only ate half of what was on my plate, avoiding anything I deemed a funny color or gross.  After years of conditioning myself to eat some of these meats (chicken, ground beef, pork, turkey) I have given up chicken.  Not eating chicken has been far more challenging than anticipated, I sympathize with my vegetarian and vegan friends because I feel like 90% of every menu at restaurants and bars around Southern Wisconsin contains chicken!  I made the decision to stop eating chicken because I had some bad experiences with the meat, but it seems like chicken keeps getting pushed in my face.  My favorite sandwich at Panera Bread used to be the frontega chicken, so I don't eat that anymore, then I found out that a lot of cream soups use chicken stock (dead chicken boiled in water), so why would I want to eat that if I don't eat chicken? So I started to make my own soup with vegetable stock.  The more vegetarian items I eat, the less and less I seem to need to eat meat.  So I wonder, are there things that you never liked, and through eating them over and over began to tolerate?