Mindful Meat Eating
A few things.
1. Bacon is the food of the gods.
2. Animal cruelty is an actual thing.
3. The planet is about to implode into a dust bowl at least in part because of how we raise creatures for eating.
Every once in a while I get to feeling pretty guilty about eating meat. It's super bad for the planet.
Food featured in this post is a salad, with Yves quinoa bites + tahini/sirracha dressing
My forays into vegetarianism:
Crabby Vegetarian
The first time I went veg was after a crab fishing trip in Australia when I was 13 and we used kangaroo tail for bait. I decided to go veg for a small time. Pretty sure I ate a Filet O'Fish from Chez MacDo during this period.
Guys, I was 13. I am now aware that is the worst most grossest thing on the McDonald's menu.
the heavy footprint vegetarian
The next time I went veg was when Kyle had an SUV + I was like, whoa. I wasn't raised by an environmentalist to stay cool with this. We spent 6 months eating vegetarian to offset his carbon footprint. Then we watched Food Inc and were like damn. whoa. we are on the most righteous path!
then we realized we were living in Pennsylvania and even the salads had meat on them so we just gave up.
The current situation not-actually vegetarian vegetarian.
I watched Okja, this really lovely arty film about this super giant pig with an even bigger heart + as the credits rolled I literally said,
“well, shit. guess we have to be vegetarians again.”
fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck.
Kyle immediately said he had just been reading about climate change + that the amount of land + water we have to use to feed animals is pretty shocking + horrifying + if we keep this up there's literally going to be no planet left for future generations. He's a meteorologist. He's into this stuff.
He said that he'd been thinking about going vegetarian again for a while.
But therein lies the rub - we GD love bacon. And slow roasted ribs. And prosciutto. And various other meats.
But we then realized, hey. We don't actually have to be a vegetarian. There's no glory in the title.
What I owe the planet, and the animals that live on it, is to be more mindful about how much meat I eat.
so introducing:
the Mindful Meat Eater
aka the Flexitarian
We decided that instead of going
cold turkey
hahaha, meat eating puns!
we just stopped cooking meat at home.
That's basically the long and short of it. Also if the meat isn't adding much - like would you like to add a chicken breast to your salad? we don't order it when we're out either. (However, if we're at a fancy Italian restaurant + they say the chef's grandma's lamb dish is on the menu, fuck yeah we'll order that shit.)
So after starting this it means we probably reduced the number of meals we eat with meat in them by about 75%, which means we get to be happy about 25% of the time.
I jest!
There's some insanely good vegetarian options out there. Hell there's even a killer set of vegan ones. We just got into the Minimalist Baker + she's been freaking slaying it. I honestly really like vegetarian food. And I really, really like what eating more vegetarian and vegan options means for mother earth + all her inhabitants.
Also this attitude means when we're out and about we don't have to be fussy or tell anyone we have food restrictions. We don't have to be sad to miss out on a bone marrow luge with sherry, because fuck it. YOLO. Or tell my grandma we can't eat the frozen pizza she got us because it has meat on it. And we are more likely to keep with this for years, as we aren't really restricting ourselves.
it's not all or nothing.
Because all or nothing attitudes, they can be hard to swallow. (Ha, more eating puns!) But they also prevent us from taking the first steps towards change. If you have to never eat meat again that's a GD nightmare. But you can probably reduce some of your meat consumption.
I was kind of keeping this new found attitude on the DL as it seemed like I was kind of kidding myself, although it really seemed like a good idea. But then a friend posted this Ted Talks on the same topic and I was entirely vindicated + feel like I should spread my new veggie gospel.
He doesn't eat meat on weekdays. We don't cook meat in our home.
Same same but different.
And my wish for you?
May you get to be a mildly self-righteous vegetarian who also gets to enjoy all the wonders that is a perfect hamburger.
just. like. me.
Individual loaves of bread take a “hey do you want to come over for dinner” invite into a “holy shit I had my own loaf of bread for dinner I love my host so much” invite.