I WOULD love to say that this past week has been a challenge, and I had woken up in the middle of the night by my stomach rumbling having been dreaming about pork chops.

But aside from my utter contempt for sweetcorn (I just don’t understand why people would eat something their bodies cannot digest, nor can I stand the smell of it) my week as a vegetarian was actually a surprisingly enjoyable task. Even if I was triple checking the ingredients of absolutely everything for a stray corn lurking somewhere.

I had quite the eventful week too, sampling the vegetarian options at a local take-away, enjoying tea, cakes, and sandwiches at Buckingham Palace during a Queen’s Garden Party, and - perhaps the highlight of the week - trying to eat one of McDonald’s two vegetarian options while Adver_Tom made his way through an entire box of chicken nuggets in a bid to test my resolve.

What I found, through all of this, was that being a vegetarian is actually surprisingly easy.

Even going out for dinner in Old Town I was well-catered for on the menu of one of our favourite watering holes. And preparing a salad for lunch to take to work was really quite enjoyable. Quorn’s fake steak strips with spinach, button mushrooms, baby plum tomatoes and avocado will become a regular feature of my lunch from here on in, having thrown one together late on Thursday night ahead of my final day.

I also had a bit of a telling-off from a former colleague, who managed to stab herself in the hand with a knife while trying to scoop out the contents of an avocado on the very day I had poked fun at the epidemic of alligator-pear-inflicted injuries besieging Middle England. Watch how Nigella does it, she has all the answers.

Although for those not prepared to sit through eight minutes of unbridled culinary innuendo, Adver_Sue has stumbled upon quite the device which is sure to slash waiting times at A&E. She is no longer at risk of stabbing herself in the hand having bought a £6 utensil that not only allows her to split the fruit in half, but also scoop and slice it into dainty pieces which look far more dignified than the hand torn chunks in my own salads. Modern society at its very peak, right there.

I broke my final day of going veggie at a work barbecue, as part of me didn’t want to have to email the boss and ask for veggie sausages, and then be expected to make my way through the full pack of six that had dutifully been bought. Maybe I should have just made do with the side salad.

But the million dollar question - will I stick to being a vegetarian? Probably not. Will I cut down on the amount of meat in my diet? Absolutely.

Quite apart from anything else, there is the cost aspect of a meat-rich diet, which I hadn’t really noticed before. It was only as I came to pay at the checkouts for a basket-load of food on day one when I thought I must have missed a few barcodes that I fully realised how much money I was saving by finding meat alternatives.

Although Tesco can keep their fake bacon. That will not be gracing any future fry-ups of mine.