what's the beef?

Cow Butcher Cuts Print, a photo by spottedsparrow on Flickr.

Yesterday I made a beef casserole. Unfortunately, I didn't manage to eat any of it. I don't think seeing the meat in its raw state helped as it made me very aware that an animal had died for this and here was its dead flesh. The casserole smelled lovely when it was cooking, but I sniffed a piece of beef once it was on my plate and it just had that horrible butchery smell that makes me want to wretch. I did manage to eat a couple of pieces of carrot and turnip that had been in the casserole with the meat (something I wouldn't normally do) but that was as far as it went. Graham quite enjoyed his (I was worried it would be horrible since it was my first attempt at cooking meat and I didn't really know what I was doing) but I was left very hungry and had to resort to eating cheese on toast later in the evening.

I feel like this was a big setback in my devegetarianisation process and I can't imagine ever eating any meat now. Or fish. And do I really want to anyway? Why am I doing this in the first place? I'm just not sure any more. Sigh...