Confessions of an Unreconstructed Carnivore

July is both ice cream month and baked bean month.  Now that is a combination you usually don’t see too closely together.  Of course, you round those two out with a steak and you’ve got a perfect meal for my husband.

 

“Want a salad with that, Sweetie?  It’s good for you.”

 

“Nope,” he says, “salad is just wet vegetables.”

“How about some broccoli with cheese sauce?”

“Cheese sauce sounds fine—hold the broccoli.”

You understand my problem.  While I will eat anything except rattlesnake, my husband is the original meat, potatoes and gravy man.  He is either the easiest or the hardest man in the world to cook for.  Meat: well done.  Vegetables:  peas, corn, green or baked beans, preferably out of a can.  Potatoes: yes!  Gravy: it’s a beverage, serve it at every meal.  Tom will not do well when the food police take over.  And if Tom does not do well I will not do well.  All you women out there know what I am talking about. 

I cherish the concept of personal choice in food as in all things.  Recent attempts to rein in my gustatory selections are concerning me.  In June of 2001 my husband and I visited Africa to observe the first total solar eclipse of this millennium.   We were part of an astronomy group on safari in Zimbabwe and Zambia.  At dinner, after our first tour of the Hwangi game preserve, we were moving along the buffet line when our server pointed out that the next selection was impala, the delicate, fine-boned animals we had fallen in love with on the earlier outing.  I looked at the thin slices of brown meat floating in a rich sauce. 

“I’ll have two, please.” I said.  It was delicious.

I am an unreconstructed carnivore.  More correctly, of course, I am an omnivore.  I love fruits and veggies.   I haven’t found a grain I didn’t like.  I can and have gone a day or two without meat, and a salad a day keeps the hips at bay.   But, sooner or later, I am going to need (not want—need!) a thick slab of meat. 

I have read, heard and rejected the arguments favoring a meatless lifestyle.  I remain what I am, a fully evolved homo sapien with canine teeth and the instinct to use them.  I am, as they say, armed and dangerous. 

Yet I am now faced with people who are making aggressive attempts to not just inform others about food choices (I’ve got no problem there), but limiting those choices for the rest of us.  No salt, no sugar, no meat, no kidding, no fun.  Why do vegetarians all behave like missionaries in a pagan land?  I don’t make a point of saying that I enjoy eating dead animals.  I don’t point out the sentient qualities of plants or demand that vegetarians read Attenborough’s book, The Private Life of Plants.  Why don’t they treat me with the same benign neglect with which I am willing to treat them? 

Of course, zealots of any kind are not the kinds of people with whom one has a conversation.  They don’t want to listen, they want to shout.  I, on the other hand, want to make a few quiet points before frying up some chicken. (1) You can love animals without hating humans.   (2) Evolution has designed us for an omnivorous diet and our brains and metabolism respond positively to that diverse input.  (3)  The middle ground is always better than the fringe.  (4)  I refuse to live my life sprinkling, “Beano” on every plate of grass clippings I eat. 

Enjoy lots of beans and ice cream this month, oh, and keep the faith.