As a further elaboration: growing up, I absolutely hated pasta salad. I could not and would not eat it. But one day, when I was about 22-23, I was working somewhere that includes meals, since shifts were literally all day for a week (save eight hours for sleeping). The cook made a pasta salad that I could only describe as “orgasmic.” I ate that same pasta salad for every meal for the next two days until they finally tossed the leftovers. Ever since then, I have been “converted” to enjoy pasta salad. That one dish completely changed how my body reacts to a food that I already tried several times.
In 2016 I was traveling around New Zealand and had an amazing mushroom and cheese toastie. It was so good that I remember thinking, as I drove away, that I’d be happy to eat that toastie over a lot of foods I normally enjoy.
Around a year later I decided to stop eating meat. I begun by allowing myself to eat fish and over a month or so gave up that as well. While not directly related, that mushroom toastie planted a seed in my brain that being a vegetarian didn’t mean eating salad every day.
I don’t know if or when I would have become a vegetarian anyway, but that toasted sandwich certainly helped me decide when I was ready.
Mushroom and cheese toastie… I’d never thought about that but might give it a go.
That’s rad, I’ve been on a similar path but I keep on going back to meat from fish
Don’t worry about being an absolutist!
Eating less meat is 100% a win. Celebrate that!