I can't sleep for reasons I won't go into right now and am waiting for the phone to ring (it's 2 am on Sunday morning) and I'm blogging to stop my anxiety getting out of control...

I've just finished reading a great book by Liz Jones called "The Exmoor Files" I only started it this afternoon. Liz writes about moving out of London to Exmoor where she buys a large crumbling farm with lots of land and promptly starts aquiring animals - a couple of rescued horses, ponies, lambs, ex-battery chickens, an abandoned sheepdog...and also about trying to get over her failed marriage.

Reading what she says about cruelty to animals ( I SO agree with almost everything she says) I find my own guilt about eating animals raising its head. I became a vegetarian a few months after I married (poor Phil could probably have got a divorce on the grounds of unreasonable ruelty as I then promptly stopped cooking any meat at all!) and remained so until I was pregnant with Sian and succumbed to a bacon buttie. Even after that lapse, I stayed mainly veggie for quite a long time but finaly realised that the lure of meat was too great. I remember, vividly, sinking my teeth into a fabulous beefburger on my first trip to NYC; the taste after so many years of strict vegetarianism, followed by only eating fish andchicken, was so overwhelmingly intense I almost fainted with pleasure.

I still can't bear the look or smell of steak and loathe the smell of a butcher's shop. I prefer not to think of exactly what meat is - flesh of a formerly living animal. Kate & I both stopped eating lamb because we both really like sheep (see picture above!) I'm not so fond of cows but oh, I do love chickens and I feel so guilty eating them!

Here's my dilemma; I'm not sure I can face going veggie again. My family are all carnivores which means I'd often be cooking separate meals. Veggie food is quite labour intensive - you have to think more about what you're cooking if you're not going to end up on a very dull and repetitive regime. On the other hand, I don't want to eat animals so much any more.

For the moment I think I'll compromise by cooking more fish and veggie meals and trying to play down the meat content.