burgers, bratwurst, and buckle

After I reluctantly revealed to my family that on last weekend's visit I would be eating meat with them, I proceeded to eat a wide assortment of animal products with gusto. Highlights include chicken, hot links and other sausages on the BBQ at Dan and Alina’s housewarming party, a sushi feast, and even a hamburger. I suspected that the weekend would hold some delights, given that I always eat well when I visit my family in the bay area. I think my favorite part of this little experiment is the vast selection of foods that I can choose from. This is a little dangerous for me given my inability to make insignificant decisions, but it feels adventurous and refreshing to be able to try everything at a restaurant. It is liberating to be able to eat whatever is offered to you. In the past, especially growing up in a small town with few fellow vegetarians, it always felt awkward to have to refuse the hospitality of friends who offered me meat. It was out of this awkwardness, along with a palpable fear of malnutrition, that sparked my last carnivorous dabble, during my semester abroad in Ecuador.

It turns out that Ecuadorians do not eat very many vegetables, or, for that matter, much else besides meat and starch. After a few too many meals of white rice and potatoes, I caved and announced to my host family that I was ready to start eating meat. They were delighted, mostly because they liked the idea that they had corrupted my healthy ways. I don’t know if anyone else can speak to this, but being a vegetarian in Ecuador is impossible. In my first weeks there I ordered a vegetable soup with lunch and my first spoonful in the murky broth revealed a large chicken foot.

Luckily I escaped that four-month stint without ever eating a cuy—guinea pig, an Ecuadorian delicacy—although I saw enough of them speared and roasted for my 10-year-old self to turn in her grave. Particularly traumatizing was the morning I woke up a little hung-over and groggy, opened the fridge for breakfast, and found a half-eaten cuy sitting in the fridge, uncovered and staring at me. I’m sure it is delicious, but I don’t think I will ever be able to eat an animal that I have had as a pet, especially given the tragic death of my childhood guinea pigs that may or may not have been my fault. Cuy aside, I think that having an open mind about food, including eating meat when you might have been a vegetarian, or even eating things that might give you the runs later, is key to traveling with spontaneity and immersing yourself in a new culture.

And while my family has always been particularly accommodating to my diet, it was kind of nice to be able to immerse myself in the food they prepared, no reservations (as long as no pets are involved).

deep-dish pizza off the deep end

American society loves to watch and contribute to the fall of the most conservative and wholesome. Our disturbing interest in Linsay Lohan--once child star playing both Parent Trap twins, now in and out of rehab/jail--lies in our subconscious desire to tear down those who appear pure, innocent, or otherwise untainted by our society. Therein lies a niche fascination with the Amish. Such an abstinent and self-sacrificing people must have a great desire to succumb to the sins of modern society, right? That is what we hope to find, but in fact, after a foray in the outside world, they often choose to return to the ascetic, rural life their parents chose for them. A fantastic episode of This American Life tells this story, among others.

I'm thinking that if everyone hears the devil on their shoulder, we all hope that others will succumb to him/her before we do, thus retaining some sense of self-integrity. So if Lindsay Lohan and I were both innocent adolescents around the same time, but now she is addicted to god-knows-what and violating her parole, and I am only a slightly-ruined woman with no jail time or drug addictions to speak of, then I win in this social competition. And winning is important. If we can imagine that even the Amish hear the devil on their shoulder, it helps us feel like they aren’t winning. This social phenomenon is perhaps what has sparked what I will call a fad, for lack of a better word, of Amish Romance novels. I came across an entire rack of them, by at least a half-dozen different authors, at WinCo once.

Obviously the parallel between vegetarians and the Amish is limited, but in a way, people who do not restrict their diet who like to entice vegetarians to eat meat, are sort of like those who secretly want the Amish to try gambling or something. If you can entice a more conservative person to do what you do, it makes what you do way more socially acceptable.

My family has been trying to entice me to eat meat for most of my vegetarian years. So, the fact that last night I ate and enjoyed a slice or two of deep-dish pizza with a large slab of house-made Italian sausage at Masa, will come as a big surprise and shock to most people who know me, especially my sisters. Likely, they will be pleased to find that I have succumbed to the earthly pleasure of flesh, and will quit eating things like meatless Buffalo wings, at least for the time being. In my family, this will make me a bit like Lindsay Lohan: the vegetarian sister who finally goes off the meat-eating deep end.

rumspringa-wha?

Most people I know and love know me and love me (or perhaps distain me) as a vegetarian. For the past eight-odd years, the foods I choose and choose not to sustain myself with have become an overwhelming part of my identity. So much so that I try to phrase it in less pigeon-holing terms:

“No, thanks, I don’t eat chicken.”
-“Are you some kind of vegan/animal rights activist/crazy person?
No. I just am not currently eating meat.
-Oh. Not even fish/ham/turducken?
No. I am not eating animals.
-Not even eggs?
Life begins at birth, asshole.

When people ask why I don’t usually have a good answer. Usually it’s some sort of formulation about health, both mine and the world’s, but I don’t always succeed in not coming off as dogmatic or, conversely, apathetically or arbitrarily vegetarian.

Living in the tofu-eating bubble of Eugene, Oregon for the last four years has not made me question my eating habits much. There, the typical host will ask if anyone eats meat, rather than if anyone is a vegetarian, and veggie burgers are usually the default barbecue fare.

But, as so many red-blooded Americans will tell you, human beings were meant to eat flesh. I will not try to argue with that, so now, finally, I am going to test it out myself. After years of claiming that I feel healthier when I don’t eat meat, I’m going to actually try it on for size.

And that’s where my Amish imagery comes in. The legend goes that the Amish, perhaps America’s most celebrated conservatives, are given a trial period of the sinful non-Amish life at the end of their adolescence. At the end of the Rumspringa, the youth must decide whether they wish to return to Amishdom or become a regular American. The fascinating part of the Rumspringa, and one that is capitalized upon in the media, is that Amish youth rarely chose the life of sin they enjoyed for a year, and usually return, prodigal-son-like, to their families. It certainly doesn’t help that their families will shun them if they don’t return, but theoretically, the choice is all theirs.

As a woman who appreciates her right to choose, I have resolved to make an educated reevaluation of my diet. In Rumspringa fashion, I will quit vegetarianism—yes, cold turkey—and begin to eat all kinds of meat. After the fling with meat subsides, I will coolly and rationally decide whether I wish to return to the realm of the herbivores or not.

Most likely, I will. But only time will tell. Stay tuned.

a drop in the bucket

Sitting here at the Los Angeles airport, it is only properly inappropriate that I ritualize my transition into the unknown. While this may seem trite, or at least a well-worn cliché, that is because it is well worn—worn by every graduate, like a pair of inappropriately low slung jeans—and every person who does not know what they want to do with their lives from their first cognizant moment (read: their parents planned their careers from conception). So this is an exercise in exploration, and most importantly, in keeping my mind going now that college is winding down, and come June, I will have next to no cerebral occupations, aside from the ever stimulating needs of the populace at the grocery store where I work.

My liberal arts degree allows me to know of Georges Bataille, who came up with the concept of non-productive expenditure. He says that under the direction of capitalism, while our society ostensibly values people and things that are “productive,” that do something or make something, simultaneously and paradoxically, our conception of the sacred is based upon non-productive expenditure, that is, that which does not advance or create anything useful in a conventional way, and at worst, destroys or consumes the useful: i.e. resources, energy, and the various creative juices of our society. Such acts and endeavors, among them non-procreative sex, sacrifice (especially that of one J.H. Christ), and poetry, are considered sacred, precisely because they capture our attention as being non-productive. This seems to explain a lot about our society for me, and links Christianity, pornography and cults in the most interesting approach I’ve encountered. I would add Facebook and other such energetic and social black holes that the 21st century has created for us as non-productive expenditures, that which essentially does nothing, but yet capture our energy and rapt interest just for that reason.

That said, while Bataille considers these things sacred, and I can’t disagree, I am constantly looking for productive expenditure, to lure me away from such “sacred” vices. I am the queen of finding “productive” ways to waste time, once I become personally shamed by the hours passed doing absolutely nothing productive, academic or otherwise. My personal favorites are knitting, baking and running, all done when I have the most papers to write or at least two exams in the next week. Such productive activities give me something to show for hours spent furiously not word processing jewels of academia, but perhaps furiously Facebook chatting. This blog will give me a productive outlet. For now, for not writing my ever-looming undergraduate thesis that will give me the keys to the world (of unemployment), and later, in said unemployment or worse— the slave labor known as unpaid internships—in order to keep the proverbial ball rolling, to keep the cerebral stone from too much moss.