omnivore guilt

When I turned 11 years old, my parents told me that I could have any party that I wanted- I chose to have a dinner of 11 of my best friends where we ate only Ribs, pork ribs, from my favorite rib joint in Philadelphia, where I am from. The Rib Crib does spicy, mild, and chicken wings. The saucy has molasses and I am sure plenty of things I never wanted to know in it. The point being, from a young age I have loved meat.

Two summers ago I decided to develop my cooking skills so that I could prepare and cook my own dinners which contained meat. I tried to cook every organism with a thigh bone. I looked for meat that was from the District, Maryland and Virginia area. Local meat has been a part of my mother's mantra since I was a young girl because of the flavor that freshness brings. She wanted flavor, flavor, flavor, butter, salt, fresh, good-looking produce, and somewhere along the line I osmosis-ed the whole lesson. When I started learning about the environmental impact of food in college, and tried to tell her she had been doing the right thing this whole time, my mom laughed me off. She believed it, but hated the hackneyed lesson of climate change as an impetus to alter her eating style.

This was never a problem until this past summer, whereupon I decided to take meat out of my diet entirely. She did not understand, she didn't believe that meat raising was effecting enough environmental damage to stop eating it every night. Well, it was a battle for about 2 months, but not too serious, and eventually I proved her right by shrugging off the challenge. I do still eat some meat some times. I still definitely eat seafood, and relish it. However, the pervasive environmental guilt I feel about eating meat means that I never buy it for myself unless I purchase something without paying attention once in a blue moon. All of a sudden I'll find myself halfway through a turkey sandwich when I babysit a kid who is himself munching on chicken fingers. If the meat is free, then I'll take it. My purchasing power is what matters- I don't want to be involved in the customer demand feedback loop empowering retailers to buy more meat.

I go to the farmer's market once a week, but I also go to Giant. I consider my decision to bike or use public transport to access my food retailers an environmentally charged decision in that it limits my use of fuel to get my food. My mother worries that I am not getting enough iron so she mails me beans; honestly, I love lentils and will eat as many as she sends me, but I wish she could send me some ribs from the Rib Crib on Germantown Ave. instead.