Huh…I don’t know if I’ve ever taken that long a break from the blog, apart from when I’ve been traveling. It’s been a busy couple of days…a conference, Nellie’s holiday party, catching up on the ever-growing pile of stuff I/we need to do, visiting friends, trying unsuccessfully to see a movie last night, etc.

Probably the only thing really worth mentioning right now is a decision we made yesterday: that we’ll start eating meat again. Well…I guess we were still eating seafood so it’s not as if we were really vegetarians, but we decided to work other meat back into our diet.

While I think we’ve done pretty well to go off most meat for two full years, and off red meat for two and a half, I still view this decision as something of a failure. The main reason we’re adding more meat to our diet is because we’ve done a piss-poor job at ensuring protein is part of our diet. We’ve also sucked at expanding our usual meal choices over the past couple of years, such that I feel very limited in what I can eat now. I’m not saying that’s a valid reason to eat animals, I’m just saying it’s another way in which I failed at this. A big factor has been time constraints; both of us have been working a lot of hours lately, and when we do that we tend to sacrifice good eating habits. By reintroducing chicken to my diet — and I think that’s all I’ll take back for now — I hope to at least have more quick, healthy options to go to.

Certainly we’ll eat less meat than we did before we started this little experiment. I’ve had six meals since we made this decision and I have yet to eat any meat, so it’s not as if I feel a ravenous hunger for it. I feel guilt even thinking about eating meat (weird, since I’ve been eating fish for two years), as I should…if my rationale for going off meat was to spare animals, then I should keep in mind at all times the consequences of going back to it.

We’ve also decided not to buy meat in grocery stores, opting instead for places like Cumbrae’s and The Healthy Butcher. Their meat isn’t really any more humane — they still kill the animals — but if we’re going to do something as environmentally irresponsible as eat meat, we’ll try to do the least amount of damage possible.

Anyway, a few minutes after making the decision, Nellie had ordered her first bacon in over two years and seemed to enjoy it an awful lot. She’s gone to and from vegetarianism before, so maybe it’s a little easier for her. I’m just not sure when I’ll be able to bring myself to try chicken, or pork, or especially beef. I suspect the latter will happen in February…Nellie’s already decided she wants steak for her birthday.