vegetarian

 

I've toyed with being a vegetarian all my life. The first time I had two roommates and my daughter and as we sat down to eat a not-so-good vegetarian meal, she piped up in her four-year-old voice, "I liked our Burger King at lunch better." Meat appeared on our table from then on.

When I lived alone, I only bought meat when I was having dinner company. I ordered fish in restaurants. If I were at a dinner party, I ate whatever meat was served. After all, I couldn't bring the animal who donated my portion of his body back to life.

Now married to a devoted, fish-hating, vegetable-tolerant, lentil-allergic man, meat has become more a part of my daily life.

I never bite into a piece of pork that I don't think of pigs crowded into a barn and the stuffed on a truck like those people on the way to concentration camp in WWII, chickens hanging upside down waiting to be beheaded, or cows knowing something was up as they are herded toward the slaughterer.

At the same time, the smell of bacon frying, a good piece of lamb or Rick's BBQed ribs sends me salivated more than Pavlov's dogs.

At the same time, I adore fruits and vegetables. Lentils, chick peas, grains can make my mouth water. Tofu? Not so much, but I ate tons of it hidden in many ways going thru menopause. It stopped my hot flashes. 

Would I be a vegetarian if I lived alone. Probably at home I would be and revert to my earlier habits of only meat when served at a dinner given by friends. 

I would enjoy it, but still feel badly about the animal.