Growing up, I had a couple long stretches of being a pretty strict vegetarian. I'm grateful for it because it taught me to get creative in the kitchen and learn to embrace vegetables in a way that I'm not sure I would have otherwise. But, inevitably, I would succumb to temptation — good cheesecake; a hunk of Parmesan cheese studded with hard, salty crystals; a bagel with cream cheese, capers and lox; my mom's lasagna.
It was this ongoing cycle of abstaining and indulging, to the point where I finally fell away from vegetarianism because I felt like I wasn't doing it right. I described it much in the way people who slowly stopped attending church do.
