The Break-Up

Consequently one of my favorite movies, it is also a very fitting title for this first post. You could say my first love is meat. All of my favorite things in the world, involve meat. My best memories, my worst memories, everything is wrapped up in food for me, and food for me has always meant meat. Dates, parties, girls nights - the first thing was always, where and what would we eat. I remember vividly the best times I have had: A filet topped with holladaise and lump crab meat; the tradional steak Sundays my husband, Jeff, and I shared all summer, the Christmas Eve Prime Rib. For thirty years, I have been a carnivore extraordinaire.

My adoption of two dogs a few years ago started making me think more about my actions as a human. I started to see the plight of homeless and abused pets, and as my love for my dogs grew, my sadness over the treatment of animals and animal cruelty grew. However, at that point, I still wasn't thinking holistically about the matter. I didn't see that behind what I was eating, was another animal; and probably an animal who was suffering even more.

But, that slowly started seeping into my thoughts. For every barbeque I have hosted, every beer can chicken I have made, every pork loin roasted, turkey deep fried, double cheeseburger I have eaten in a hungover stupor, something else had to die. Something that has feelings, thoughts, intellect.

My breaking moment, much like the one you may have had with a boyfriend, a job, a friend, whatever the point is when you reach the conclusion that you have grown out of something, came when I was actually watching a show on the Food Network called "The Big Waste." Part of the episode shows chickens that were slaughtered being thrown away because their skin had broken during the processing phase. They said they couldn't be sold because no one would buy them like that. To me, that reeked of arrogance, lordliness almost. People around the world are starving and we are throwing whole chickens away. But what really sealed the fate of meat in my diet was the fact that we abuse living creatures and take their lives with the defense that there are people to feed - only to do so in vain because the cosmetics aren't right.

After that, I forced myself to read things I knew were true in the back of my head, but failed to acknowledge before so I could continue to live in my faceless, meat-loving happy life. Just because I didn't know, didn't mean it wasn't true. I don't want to buy eggs or eat chickens that came from stressed out environments - who are forced to produce, have their beaks ripped off, and are kept in tiny crates the size of a piece of legal paper; I dont want to drink milk from cows that are made to reproduce to keep producing milk; I don't want to eat cattle that spent their final hours without food and water being transported to slaughter, I dont want to have a piece of bacon that came from a smart pig who had parts of its flesh ripped off and was kept in a tiny cage. Suddenly, that piece of bacon doesn't seem so necessary; the milkshake not as fulfilling; my hangover not as important as knowing that something suffered so I could have something so trivial.

The world is a big place. I'm not stupid, and I do understand how factory farms have come to be necessary. I think I understand the cycle of life. I don't know if I am saying that animals shouldn't be eaten, but I am saying that animals, during the course of their lives, should be treated humanely. And until I can know that animal products have come from an ethical place, I just can't bring myself to be a participant any longer. This is all so new to me. I am still sorting out my thoughts. So, for my own peace of mind, I don't know that right now I can contemplate fighting a full on rebellion against the man - I think this is a step by step personal process that I need to slowly undertake. But, what haunts me are the thoughts - when did we become so flagrant? when did food become less about what we needed to survive, and more about status and consumerism? When did we start caring only about the ends and not the means? I don't want to be the cause of suffering for anything, and I have started to realize that just because there isn't blood on my hands, doesn't mean I am not guilty. I'm tired of being a coward who makes excuses.

This is not meant to be a blog with me on my soapbox every entry. The goals of this blog are: 1)To motivate myself to stick with this, and to remind myself of the reasons why I gave up meat 2) To show others that if I, a former meat junkie can give it up, so can they 3)To share good ideas and recipes for people who are trying to live as cruelty-free as possible 4)To find a positive way to explore my thoughts, especially when I might not have anyone else in my life I can relate to.

The name of the blog came from a long-standing joke that started when I was in college. I loved meat so much, I told my best friend I would one day start a cable access show called "Meat for the Manly Girl." And here, 10 years later, I find myself meatless.