I am somewhat sad to report that after 3 years of being vegetarian (about 1 year being strict about it and 2 years of eating fish) I have fallen off the wagon. Or rather, been sort of pulled off by Ted. :)

My hubby was not a big fan of my vegetarianism. I mean, he was supportive and everything, but he really thought it put a damper on our "culinary adventures". He used to be a very creative cook, but just was not inspired by vegetarian cooking, I guess.

I didn't want to eat meat because of the cruelty factor. I did not want to support inhumane treatment of the animals raised for meat, possible inhumane butchering techniques, and all that. I always did agree that it would be fine to eat humanely raised, free range meat. But I just never did. Being vegetarian kind of feeds off itself, I found. I mean, I never meant to be fanatical about it. I thought, "I will not be one of those people who won't eat their veggies if they touch some meat. In fact if I get a craving for some meat I'll just go ahead and eat it." But I did turn sort of fanatical after all, because after a while of being vegetarian meat just started to gross me out, and I didn't want steak juice on my veggies. And I certainly didn't crave meat at all.

Anyway, after 3 years of my saying, "Sure, I'd eat meat if we could find some that is as 'cruelty-free' as possible" but not actually doing it, Ted called me on it. He bought a new barbeque for us, and since then has been going to the organic grocery to buy free-range, humanely treated chicken (and also fish and yummy organic veggies). So I've been eating chicken again. It's been pretty good, but the absolute best thing about it is that I've had dinner cooked for me almost every night since the new barbeque came to live here. I can't argue with that! Ted is a very good chef.