My family ate meat, every night except for fish on Fridays. Lamb was our family favourite. Frequently as a family we’d go on a picnic and often cooked sausages over a fire. These were really enjoyable times. One thing I never liked though was bottled tomato sauce. I know it’s almost un-Australian not to like tomato sauce. Did this put me off meat? No, I just don’t like my food smothered in tomato sauce. After I left home I became more and more interested in my health and eating well. This led me to eating less and less meat until eventually I became a vegetarian. Sort of a vegetarian! The term is flexiterian. Occasionally, I do eat meat, not at home but if I’m invited to dinner. Meat is off the menu if you at my place. Antibiotics, hormones and cruelty to animals are really why I don’t buy meat, chicken especially. Because of these things I feel good about my vegetarian choices. A statistic I heard recently was that livestock take up 83% of the world’s farmland. This is totally unsustainable with our growing world population. Another thing I listened to recently was we ate too much protein especially meat and this wasn’t good for our health. It was something like we only need about 14gm of protein a day. If that’s right it is a very small amount. I eat really well without meat and now would find it hard to buy and cook meat. What I know is that by not buying meat, my food bill is so much less. I didn’t become a vegetarian to save money. Meat can be quite expensive so without meat a smaller food bill just happens, even by eating less meat you’ll save money.
Living well on a shoestring 