Easing into Vegan Eating, Part 1

Well, I must admit that when I first became vegetarian, there were four times I had meat after that:

1. I'm on the Booster Club for my kids' school, and every spring we have a barbecue for the kids.  We had a bunch of leftover hamburgers.  I had been a vegetarian for two months and was going to pass, but I thought, "Well, it'll go to waste if I don't...".
2. Several months later, my sister and I took my mother out to eat for her birthday at one of our local Chinese restaurants.  She had ordered some kind of rolls stuffed with pork.  I didn't know it at the time, and she apparently forgot that I had become vegetarian a few months earlier.  She told me her food was really good but that she couldn't eat all of it and told me to take a bite, because I'd love it.  I asked afterwards what was in it (stupidly) instead of before!
3. My parents went to Alaska for the second time on a long, leisurely trip.  My dad and uncle went hunting for caribou and did a lot of fishing.  They shipped back some halibut that my sister stored in their freezer.  Upon their return, they invited us over for dinner.  My dad asked why I wasn't eating the fish.  "I'm vegetarian, dad."  I know there are a lot of pesco-vegetarians out there, but I wasn't one of them.  Still...I felt bad and he was so proud.  So I ate a couple of bites. 
4. Last Thankgiving, we went to my aunt's house, and I brought a vegetarian rice dish.  I didn't have turkey or ham, mind you.  I carefully looked through all the food and in the corner was a crockpot bubbling with green bean casserole.  Mmmm...mushrooms, green beans, crunchy stuff on top.  I put a lot on my plate, in the space where the ham and turkey used to go.  I was almost done with it when I spotted a piece of bacon!

Needless to say, I ask now if it's not immediately apparent, especially since I'm now vegan and milk products are sometimes easy to hide in things!  But that's not why I told you about these events.  Instead, I wanted you to know that even if/when you do make that commitment, if you do slip up, don't beat yourself up about it.  If you become vegan, you have made that choice for yourself.  If you slip up once or twice, that's okay.  We've been raised in a society that is serious about its food, and meat and dairy are huge to our culture (some of you might remember the "Four Food Groups"--meat and dairy were two of them, half of the food we were supposed to eat!).  So...being vegan is sometimes hard, especially at get-togethers, but it's not impossible, and you'll get smarter, like I have (I always ask now!).