You can cook almost any dish you like without meat. Vegetarian recipes don't need to be special. There are tons of ways to make good oven dishes, vegetable dishes, Chinese dishes, pastas... all you need to do is leave out the meat. Sometimes you can add and substitute, but often it's not even necessary.
I'm a vegetarian though. I slowly became one over the course of time.
I like meat, but here in The Netherlands (due to our lack of space) the majority of meat comes from intensive farming. We call it the 'bio industry'. Meat cows and pigs that never see the daylight are squeezed in boxes where they can't even turn around and eat each other's tails in frustration. Not to mention the fact that the bio-industry is one of the biggest causes of pollution in our country.
It's a market that I'd rather not support, so I'm just not buying the product. It started out with not wanting to eat meat everyday, so when I made myself dinner it was like 'let's make something without meat today'. I was always a real vegetable lover and over time I found out all sorts of things that I could eat without meat. Every once in a while I would still eat meat when my father made some.
At some point I suddenly realized that I hadn't eaten any meat in 5 or 6 weeks time, and decided I didn't need it any more. It worked wonders for my skin (I had pretty bad acne) and my digestive problems had become less and less frequent.
It's not that I'm against eating meat or killing animals per se. I'm against the bio industry. I wouldn't mind eating meat if the animal had a reasonably good life... if I were somewhere where there wasn't anything else (think somewhere like Mongolia) I'd eat it in a heartbeat, no problem. These days you can also buy meat from biological farms and meadow cattle, but if you haven't eaten meat in years you develop some kind of aversion to it. I guess it's easier just to not eat it at all.
I wouldn't want to be a vegan though, pfffff, that's just insane.
I didn't eat fish either, because fishing in these parts exacts a heavy toll on the environment. Lots of illegal fishing has caused most of the common fish populations to drastically decrease in numbers. There is legislation and EU quota for all the species, but there is still a lot of illegal product on the market. I know some places where you can buy fresh herring all year round, even in mid-winter, although officially they are only allowed to catch herring during a few months in summer. Lots of fishing practices are endangering dolphins and sea-bird populations.
These days, the WWF releases a 'fishlist' every few months. It lists all the species and specifies which populations are healthy (green list), which are healthy only in certain areas (orange list), and which you'd better not buy at all (red list). So if I want to buy something from the orange list, I only need to see where it was caught.
A few years ago my girlfriend developed a chronic illness, and one thing that really helps alleviate it, is regularly eating red fish (which is generally rich in Omega 3&6). Since then I eat fish from time to time. I like it better than meat anyways.
So actually since a few years I'm not a vegetarian anymore... I just don't eat meat. I don't like the effects that human over-consumption of meat and fish have on animals and the environment. It's something that I don't want to support. It's not something that I do to feel righteous about. I generally never mention it, only if people ask about it.
I think it's a shame that some people can get so upset about vegetarianism. It's like they hate you because you are different. Again, for most vegetarians I know, it's really a matter of conscience, not a matter of being 'holier than thou'.
