BOOK: The Butcher and the Vegetarian by Tara Austen Weaver

A Google alert popped up in my email saying: "A vegetarian goes over to the dark (meat) side."

I was intrigued.

The link led to a (slightly boring) Q&A with Tara Austen Weaver who gave up being a vegetarian when her holistic doctor suggeted she eat meat for health reasons. (Read the Q&A here)

She had been a veggie all her life. In her book she describes what it was like beginning to eat meat. This includes enjoying barbecued bacon and "meat hangovers"

The blurb on the book reads: "One Woman's Romp through a World of Men, Meat and Moral Crisis." This put me off. It makes it sound like some kind of Sex in the City meets the Bible meets a cook book.

Maybe it's just me. I hate it when people connect vegetarianism with morality. It's a personal choice about diet not some kind of religious superiority to those who eat meat.

I haven't read the book so I won't judge it. It might be fantastic...just with a rubbish blurb. Either way it'd be interesting to read about the effects of eating meat on the body and mind of a life-long vegetarian.

Check out Tara's website and blog.

Vegetarian nightmares at Disney World and Denny's

I've been a vegetarian for more than 20 years and in that time I've taken the bad eating out experiences with the good but a recent fortnight's holiday in Florida took the biscuit (not made with lard, obviously).

I won't rant about every bad experience I had in that two weeks in one go but I wanted to explain what finally led me to start this blog.

I wanted to encourage a community where people can share their experiences (good and bad) of living without meat or fish. I wanted to create a forum where people can come for advice and support because it can be hard.

I wanted to make a space where people can enjoy, even relish, being a vegetarian because sometimes it feels as if it's treated as a flippin' disability.

Anyway - that's a quick introduction. In my next post I'll share some of the awful service I had to endure in America last month from endless Chicken Salads (hold the chicken) to ham in my "Veggie Omlette".

Bet you've all been there.

Jo x