This will be one of those post that starts in one place and then takes a sharp left turn and then probably starts going uphill or something. What I mean is, I'm going to change subjects a little so try and keep up.
First of all some of you may know that I am doing the Tuesday Tummy Tuck (basically we are all on a low cal healthy eating lifestyle change and we weigh in every Tuesday, it's not to late to join by the way). I've been feeling frustrated with my slow weight loss so last week I decided to pull a Babe Ruth and predict a home run. Or in my case I was predicting a 3 pound weigh loss this week. No more of this one pound a week shit. Step away from the chocolate Shannon. Because I was hell bent on making this goal and not looking like a fucking idiot who couldn't abstain from junk food long enough to lose 3 lbs I've been very good this week. That means that big huge piece of strawberry tuxedo cake sitting in my fridge has done that all week SIT!
Back to the point of the story here. Last night we took Brandon to the indoor McDonalds play place because its freezing here and he WANNA GO PARK WANNA GO PARK really bad. Rob says he will take him when he picks him up from work but he has to stop by the bank first so we ended up being off at the same time. I told him I would meet him and Brandon there. This means that I go walking into McDonalds all alone (well I had Codi) and am hit with the giant wafting of FRENCH FRIES. Delicious greasy fries. Those are the only things I eat at McDonalds (aside from a salad now and then) and of course McFlurrys. I stop dead in my tracks and say to myself, it's only a small fry, and it won't hurt your weight loss any since you were super good all week. Yes thats right, one little wiff of fries and I was going to toss in the towel all together. THAT IS...until I remembered that McDonalds adds beef to their fries. FUUUUUUCK THAT! So for the first time in my life I was actually grateful for meat and I remembered why I had totally banished McDonalds from my life forever. So no fries for me, and instead I just went and played in the play land with Brandon and I actually got some exercise. It payed off because this morning I did my weekly weigh in and I saw that I had lost 4.4 pounds instead of just 3. Okay well for 4 pounds I can deal with a life with out fries.
Anyway this whole thing leads me to where I was really going with this all. An acquaintance (ahahahah it's hilarious that I refer to them this way rather then a friend) of mine recently asked me why I became a vegetarian. I realized that I'm not sure I ever wrote about that on here. I'm sure I have but I really can't remember everything I write so I wanted to tell you all again.
Becoming a vegetarian was a very slow long process. It was actually almost 14 years before I became a full on vegetarian and even now I still taste meat almost every night, because dammit a good chef tastes what they make no matter how much they hate meat.
Step one: One day in my old tiny kitchen on Toll Road I was enjoying a bologna and plastic cheese roll up. One of my all time favorite snacks. I was about 11 at the time. My cousin who is at my house looks at me and says, did you know they put pig ears and feet and noses and ears in bologna? I froze dead in my tracks and since I always took whatever my cousin said to be totally true (she used this to her advantage...just ask her sometime about the fucking pink bathrobe ghost) I threw away my bologna and gave it up for a long time. She also let me know that hot dogs were the same thing. I was so upset as those were actually my two favorite meats. Yes thats right you guys have no idea how ghetto this girl really is.
Step two: My mom likes to eat fish. She used to make me eat it. I hate hate hate fish. Aside from tasting like rotten trash, they swim in their own poop all day for goodness sakes. One night she made me fish and I wouldn't eat it. She was like no your eating it so I had to just sit and stare at it. The fish got cold and she reheated it. Finally in an attempt to get me to eat it she let me pour some Mrs. Dash cheese powder stuff on it. I think that stuff was meant for popcorn and definitely not fish. This just made it worse. That one night is the actual reason I don't make Brandon eat if he doesn't want to. If he's hungry he'll come back and eat, but if he doesn't like what I'm serving he doesn't have to eat it. I can't make his taste buds like something they don't the same way I will never ever like fish or lamb. Back to the point. The next time my mom served fish I very matter O factly informed her I was now a vegetarian. It worked, I didn't have to eat the fish. However, now I had to become a vegetarian because I had said it. Fuck what had I done.
Step three: After the fish incident I did good at giving up meat. I realized I actually didn't like it. However I totally missed burgers. SOoooo me and my dad would often go run an errand, stop at McDonalds buy burgers and eat em before we got home so my mom wouldn't know I ate meat and try and feed me more fish. But alas everything has to get ruined. One day I was about 15 at this point, my dad and I had went on a driving lesson in his jeep and he let me drive up to McDonalds (a story I should tell someday about learning to drive clutch in a 1970 jeep with no power steering up a hill..awesome). So we are up there and I'm enjoying my Big N Tasty and we are talking about me not eating meat and why and stuff and I look down at my burger and kinda see it for what it is and nearly barf. Have you every actually analyzed ground beef? If not don't! I didn't finish my burger and I have NEVER eaten a burger since.
From this point on I was mostly meat free. Only I would sometimes get reallllllly stoned and eat hot dogs or chicken strips. In fact that is how my guy friends knew when I was at my weed limit...when I requested they drive me to Raleys for chicken strips. I went about this way for 4 more years. Then when I was 19 I started the Atkins diet. Ummm have you ever done Atkins. The whole point of the diet is to eat meat. So I said, Self you can eat this meat if it means you will lose weight. SO for about 7 months I at meat. Mostly chicken and steak with a little ham and pork chops once in a while.
Step four: This is where all red meat suddenly started tasting like blood to me and I banished all red meat from my life. So now it was just chicken and pork.
Step five: Where I wake up grossed out by all pork besides bacon.
Step six: Where I discover I can no longer eat chicken that looks like chicken because chicken actually taste really fucking gross. I now realize that I hate chicken, that I've hated it all along and I don't know how in the fuck you people even eat chicken. Excuse me while I throw up. The only chicken or meat I am now tolerating is of course my beloved hot dogs (like every 4 months) and McChicken sandwiches and spicy chicken sammies from Wendy's. I could eat those because they didn't' actually look or taste like chicken.
Step seven: I get pregnant with Brandon and realize that all meat is the devil and quit eating it. Cooking it, seeing it and smelling it makes me sick. This is the point where I go pretty much off all meat with the exception again of my stupid hot dogs. (Dude could I have picked a worse meat to eat?). I still cooked it for Rob but I stood about 4 feet from the stove while doing it, and I had a coronary if I came home and my house smelled like bacon. (I burned a lot of candles then).
Step eight: Shannon gets pregnant with Codi and realizes that hot dogs taste like feet and gives up ALL MEAT FOREVER because seriously people this stuff taste like shit. Except bacon, bacon taste like pieces of fried heaven, but it is an animal so I make do with soy bacon. MMMMMMM soy bacon BLT (if I knew how to type out that sound home makes where he drools and his tongue sticks out of his mouth I would insert it here.)
At this point I think it is a combination of really thinking meat taste bad, and really not wanting to eat an animal. I've kind of tricked my mind into thinking of all animals as fluffy little kitty cats and such. I hate the idea of eating meat because all I see is the poor little animal as I'm eating it. Like I said I do taste my dinners every night, and by taste I mean I take the smallest teensiest bite you've ever seen. And last week when I tasted my beef lumpia I took a bite, chewed three times, got the flavor and spit it out. However since all good chefs taste their food, and I don't ever want to be in a position some day where I'm finally at a culinary high and I get shut down because I didn't taste the fucking chicken and notice it was undercooked, I taste the fucking chicken at night.
As a side note, when I was smaller around 11-12 I had bunnies, ducks and chickens. Because of this I always had a problem eating meat anyway. Last week I was watching Iron Chef and rabbit was the secret ingredient and I deleted the show immediately because it made me sad and I didn't want to support killing animals for sport like that. This is also why I will skip over your blog if you talk about killing animals in any way. I don't believe in it. I don't fish, I don't let my husband fish and I'm really having a hard time coming to terms with the fact that both of my kids grandparents want to take them fishing. It is against everything I believe in, and personally I think the whole world would just be better off if we were all vegetarians. I know we would all be healthier!
