I had a very weird experience this weekend.
As some of you may know, after being a copious meat-eating anti-vegetable girl, I have been vegetarian since mid June. I read the RAVE diet, watched the “Eating” documentary that came along with the book, and vicariously read most of “The China Study.” I signed onto PETA’s Goveg 30 day challenge in mid June. (Not that I’m a huge fan of PETA, but dang do they have some of the best, most easily navigated resources for being vegan.)
Surprisingly enough, this has mostly worked out for me. I made it through being vegan for about 3 weeks, then work and stress and life got to me and I started having some dairy as well, mostly in the form of latte or cheese. I can proudly say that until yesterday, I had eaten no meat except for the possibility of a few stray bacon bits and some egg in ranch dressing and baked goods for over 2 months, going on 3 now.
But lately I’ve been feeling really down and blah (probably due to the weather) and I REALLY wanted cajun food. So I decided, that since “The China Study” said that it was occasionally okay to eat fish, I’d try some cajun catfish. There wasn’t much on the menu other than salads that were horribly expensive because they came with an entire chicken breast or some such type thing on top of them, and from experience they don’t tend to give you a discount when you ask for no meat.
Now since I’ve been off of meat, I can say that I really do not miss it. While the memory of the pleasurable taste or convenience of going to McD’s and getting a 99cent double cheeseburger with no pickles or onions remains with me, when I imagine the actual act of chewing and ingesting the meat and associated grease I’m generally no longer interested.
So I was like, “okay i’m just gonna try this fish. i used to kinda like it when i was little.”
Granted I’ve never been much of a fish fan, and all other seafood is right out (with the exception of these particular crab cakes in my favorite sushi restaurant–when you’re faced with the options of expensive delicious chicken or steak, or more reasonable fish and seafood sushi, a spicy tasty crab cake goes a long way towards making you feel not so left out).
So to my experience with the cajun fried catfish.
I looked at it and wasn’t too offended. When I tasted it first I can say that I actually liked it more than I’d ever liked fish in the past. And instead of the weird “eating flesh” vibes that I would normally get when thinking of eating meat, I kept thinking “Wow. I am eating a fish. Fish are nasty; they swim around and breath water that they’ve pooped in, and generally they look gross, why am I eating a fish?”
I made it through one strip batter fried with cajun spices and fresh lemon squirted on and the best most excellent honey mustard sauce I’ve ever tasted.
Then I was done. I tried to take it home but the smell by the time we got there was too much for my fiance or myself, and so we just ditched it in the dumpster on the way up.
So yeah. No fish. Gonna start getting rid of the dairy again; I felt so much better when I didn’t eat cheese or milk.