My daughter was eight when she told me she wasn't going to eat meat anymore.
She was entirely unaware that at 11, I'd told my mum the same thing.
We'd been on holiday on a farm, city kids spending the days roaming chicken coops and pig pens and a shed with wall-to-wall rabbit hutches stuffed with fluffy bunnies. Some uncomfortable connections were made.
I told Mum that I wanted my "last meat meal" to be roast beef and Yorkshire puddings (we were English, after all) and I didn't eat any meat again for 12 years.
They were my formative food years. My busy working parents drew up a cooking roster when I was 12, and I subjected them to all kinds of strange weeknight meals from one thin, dog-eared recipe book I'd been given, Easy Vegetarian Food For One. Clearly designed for singular plant-eaters in a family on carnivores. People like me.
I made the family fried cottage cheese burgers one particularly memorable Wednesday. They really weren't great. I think I remember my brother sighing, 'FFS' and stomping off to find a cheeseburger.
But anyway, I digress.
My daughter was eight. We were on our way north for a camping trip (remember when that was something we all did?) and she announced it at the drive-through. "Just fries for me, Mum. I don't eat meat anymore."
I exchanged a look with my partner. "Sure you don't, babe." I said.
"Let's not make A Thing of it," I said to him. "See where it goes."
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