Meat
It’s been just over 15 years since I stopped eating meat: beef, chicken, fish, etc.. Eggs are okay though, they are a product that a chicken will produce without the egg being fertile. I was working at a Summer camp when it happened. This Summer camp would have been self-sufficient if it could be. We had several organic farms, as well as farm animals: chickens (layers and broilers), goats, sheep, and milk cows. We would harvest everything from the gardens, and towards the end of the Summer we would slaughter the broilers for a big end-of-Summer feast. I did that once, killed, de-feathered, and cleaned the chicken. It was a good thing to do, especially since I had eaten so many nameless chickens prior to this one. This one summer one we had a beef cow. Well, I guess we had a beef cow for several years, but this year we had it slaughtered and were using it in dishes. That was a little too much for me, so I switched to being a vegetarian. Thankfully they had great veggie dishes at the camp, so I was not searching for food to eat.
These 15 years have been pretty good. I have made a couple mistakes and eaten meat, but those were not my fault. The items I listed did not say that they had little bits of meat in them. My vegetarian cooking has gotten much better, and the amount of restaurants that serve vegetarian food has been steadily growing.
Lately I have been questioning all of this. I don’t know if it is my bodies way of saying that I need to eat meat, or if it is the coking shows that I sometimes watch. I think that part of it might be that I am living in Texas, and Texas likes it meat. The restaurants here are for the most part, meat-based ones. Going out to eat here is difficult for me. So many places that are recommended are meat-based. I would like at least one real vegetarian option that is not mushrooms or eggplant (which I can not stand, it’s a texture thing), or a salad. There is so much more to cooking without meat than many people know. Even when I go home my Mom still says that she doesn’t know what to cook for me. The weird thing about that is that we were never a big meat-eating family. She is a wonderful cook, and has made tons of things without meat in them. I think people hear ‘vegetarian’ and freak out a little, thinking we will be picky not be able to eat anything…
I think I have veered off of my original thought, it being that I wonder if I should start eating meat again. I think I will wait until my time here in Texas is over, only a couple more months now, and I will make a decision when I am in a place that has good options for me. I don’t want my local to change me, I want to change for myself.
