Kitchen Wars

Flic Everett explains how to go ago, vegan when your man’s a meat-eater (without killing each other!)

- Flic Everett

I have been a vegetarian for 15 years (after seeing an unhappy lobster at a Cornish seafood restaurant) and turned vegan about two years ago when I read more about the dairy industry.

The number of vegans in the UK has more than quadrupled in the past 10 years to 3.5 million. Marks & Spencer and Pret have vegan ranges; Pizza Express has a full vegan menu; and this summer, Waitrose & Partners became the first British supermarket to add a dedicated vegan section to its stores. Even The Great British Bake Off had a vegan week. Veganism, it seems, is on an unstoppable rise.

Admittedly, most vegans are twenty somethings, while I’m a 48-yearold mother of a grown-up son. I create new vegan recipes and cook from scratch every night. Which would all have been fine, had I stayed in my native Manchester and shacked up with a fellow eco-shopping, arty type. Instead, I fell in love with a carnivore who lives in the Highlands, home to 125,000 cattle, most of which seem to end up on his dinner plate.

The first time I met Andy, 47, a holiday let landlord, I had come to stay at his rural cottage with a mutual friend. The second day of our stay, as we were driving past fields of shaggy Highland cattle, I expressed sadness that anyone could eat such adorable animals. This led to a heated debate – well, heated on my part, calm and factual on Andy’s.

I explained why I could never do it. If you wouldn’t eat a dog, why would you eat a cow or a pig? I hoped he would absorb my passionate views and see the light. But he countered my every argument with economic statistics about farming, and concluded that he would never give up meat.

I’m used to being a vegan in a world of meat-eaters, which includes my son, my parents and many friends. I’m constantly aware that not everyone views animals and the ethics of eating them as I do.