starting over...

After 20 years as a vegetarian, I was understandably nervous about re-introducing meat into my system. That's a helluva long time between bites. So, we started slowly with a piece of sauteed chicken breast, then, the next day a fish fillet and then decided that we could handle it and it was time to tell our daughter about our new carnivoristic life.

She was five at the time, and pretty excited about it really. So we went and bought some chicken, cooked it up, passed it over and she popped it in her mouth and chewed.

And chewed.

And chewed...

"When can I stop chewing?" was her response. Understandably. After years of vegetarian food the fibrous nature of animal protein, was hard for her to handle. So we thought we'd leave it up to her to take her time, and slowly introduce meat for her to try when she was in the mood.

Next came the biggest challenge for me - re-learning how to cook meat. I was 17 when I gave it up and my cooking repetoire was solely veggie. Mucho one-pot dishes and ethnic food galore. I needed to learn to master the basics so I started to drag out the cookbooks and experiment - with mixed success...