Fish and Chips

When I made the decision to move to London, I told myself that while here I should really try everything British. Although I wasn't going to include Shepard's pie and mince meat in this resolution, I was going to include fish and chips. Even though I am a vegetarian I thought I would have been disappointed to leave England without ever having tried this English staple.

Almost three years later and I still hadn't tried it. Why eat meat when you don't have to? But I had made the mistake of telling Martin of my little promise and a mission to find the best fish shop began. Not really being a fish and chip person himself, he decided to have me risk it at our local chip shop, in hopes that I would fall in love with the meal and would want to start wanting to eat all meat. My explanation that I have never really liked fish in the first place and that a fish and chip meal wasn't going to tempt me back in made no difference. The man is desperate for me to eat meat.

We took the meal home and slopped it onto our plates. I quickly put tartar sauce all over my fish because even though I have never liked fish, who doesn't like tartar sauce? Seriously, they should think of more things to put it with. I delved in with no hesitation. And it tasted alright. Good even. Pretty much what you would expect. A lot of greasy batter with some fish flakes and a nice sauce to accompany it. But once I got into the meatier portion of the fish, I had to stop. I began to feel really ill and I only ate about half of the fish. I just couldn't do it. I felt nauseous and the whole idea of what I was eating just really grossed me out. I couldn't even look at it.

So that is my fish and chip experiment done. Here is the picture to prove that it really did happen. This is the first time in 7 years I have knowingly ate meat. Do I regret it? Not really. A promise is a promise and once I told Martin I knew I had to do it. It was also a good reminder that although being a veggie in this country sucks and even though sometimes I would love to have a salami sandwich, the actual act of putting meat in my mouth and chewing it has proven to be too much and actually makes me feel physically ill. So from now on, I'll just stick with the chips and maybe ask for some tartar sauce to go with them