While I don’t have the same existential conflict as the British food writer Nigel Stanger, I do agree with him that meat is very, very good.
I want to give up eating meat. I have long been uncomfortable with the idea of killing something just so I can have it on my plate. To take the life of a living thing just because I fancy a bit of its body, grilled and sizzling for my tea, seems just plain wrong. What is worse, I don’t even believe that we really have the right do that anyway.
I eat meat because I like it. No, scratch that. I eat meat because I love it. I like the feel of it in my hand, the way my carving knife slices through the raw flesh, the smell of it crackling and spitting in the oven. I love the way the fat crisps and the flesh stays pink and bloody, the way the juices dribble out when I carve it, the way the Yorkshire pudding soaks up the beefy gravy from my plate.
My love of roast pork and its crackling, and of the potatoes that roast in its juices, of a glossy, sticky sausage at breakfast or a grilled lamb cutlet in my fingers, always gets the upper hand.
Like I wrote above, I don’t have any problem with the killing of animals for food. That’s the way God made us and the way it’s been for thousands of years. (Cf. Fr. George Rutler’s response to Christian vegetarians and subsequent response to objectors)
But I do agree that animal flesh is darn tasty, which is why I belong to PETA … People Eating Tasty Animals. I’ve signed up for lifetime membership too.
Oh, and Stanger is right about the Yorkshire pudding too. Mmmm.
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“I eat meat because I like it. No, scratch that. I eat meat because I love it. I like the feel of it in my paws, the way my canine teeth slice through the raw flesh, the smell of it crackling and spitting in my master’s oven. I love the way the fat crisps and the flesh stays pink and bloody.” —Pooch and Winston
If my dogs could write, this is how the text would look.
All kidding aside, I grew up in a meat-eating home (save for Fridays and almost all of Lent, pre-1960s). When we didn’t eat meat, we ate fish…quite often due to my mom’s budgeting needs…salmon patties.
So I am not a vegetarian. But I have noticed that with increased age, my desire for meat has declined substantially. And this I attribute this to a reduction in the natural human need for meat, at least as far as my own ethnic background is concerned. Perhaps if I was Polynesian instead of Polish, I would have had the same need for fish and seafood.
My daughter was, for a time, a devout vegetarian during her sentimental teenage years. But she wound up supporting her college education by working on the weekends for an organic hog raiser, whose pork products, which she enjoyed as well, are utterly delicious.
I also read an article by a former devout vegan who moved to the Alaskan interior and had to eat meat in order to survive…his body required it.
Mmmm…time for a Krakus ham sandwich with some Lappi or Jarlsburg cheese and a pickle.