Hi folks, it's me again--Chef G.--the best mediocre chef in the United States, according to an unspecified number of anonymous people. Today my humble, yet enormous, brain is working overtime. Instead of creating another one of my super-stupendous Mid-western dishes, I'm going to get all philosophical and shit. I'm going to discuss a subject that has become obvious to my many, many four or five followers. You guessed it--my cooking is heavy on MEAT.
I admit it. I am attracted to meat in the most embarrassing way. Sometimes I will eat ONLY meat for a meal--huge, unhealthy quantities of meat. Cow meat, pig meat, chicken meat, fish meat--it doesn't matter to me what kind of meat. It's what my body craves, and I always listen to my body. I am not wired to be a vegan. I seem to be no less of a carnivore than a tiger.
Unlike the tiger, however, I carry an enormous burden of guilt about my meat-filled diet. I don't know the reason, exactly, but I suspect it might have something to do with the fact that I don't sneak up on animals and pounce on them with my bare hands like wolves and lions and tyrannosaurus rexes do. I don't swoop in from the air like hawks and I don't swim up to my prey like sharks. Man, I admire those animals.
Call it laziness or cowardliness, but I obtain my meat from the butcher shop or grocery store. I guess that makes me a scavenger. In other words, I'm no more noble than a mangy hyena, campground raccoon, or roadside vulture.
Philosophically and ethically I sympathize with vegetarianism. I feel good about myself when I make a big salad for dinner. Or when I make a pan of roasted vegetables or a veggie stir fry. Or when I make something with black beans. Or when I order fast food French fries in lieu of a burger. Or when an entire meal consists of a big batch of popcorn like my dad used to make on Sunday evenings when I was a kid. There are some vegetables I like quite a lot . . . but not as much as I like meat.
************
Based on that information, it might surprise you to know that I tried vegetarianism in my college years. I had met a bunch of vegetarian dudes in a "Philosophy of Religion" course. They were smart and hip and cool. I figured if I grew my hair long and became a vegetarian, I too would be perceived as smart and hip and cool.
I don't think it worked. It's hard to be taken seriously as a hipster when you look like a 9th- grader and act like a 6th-grader. Immature, impressionable, impetuous, nary a whisker, much less a beard.
The professor of my class was cool too--for a guy who was, like, FIFTY! Still, he had the beard, the longish hair, the doctorate degree in philosophy, and the academic credentials. I admired him a lot, but I'm not sure if that was because he was an intellectually challenging professor or because I'd occasionally see him hanging out in my favorite college bar. I would try to imagine what he was talking about with his companions. Most likely, I surmised, it was the concepts and writers he exposed me to for the first time--existentialism, dialectical materialism, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Tillich, Buber. I'd hate to think he was discussing the latest episode of Laverne & Shirley.
While Dr. Dreisbach's influence lasts to this day, my attempt to be a vegetarian only lasted about three weeks. I really did give it the old college try, though. My failure rested in that I pissed off my family and friends by always requiring a special diet and, more than that, the craving for meat was too strong. Even the most determined tiger can only endure leaves and grass for so long before he loses his will-power and is compelled to eat a deer. I reached my breaking point too. In my case, I ripped into the flesh of a McDonalds Quarter-Pounder with Cheese. I never looked back.
************
My brother became a vegetarian more than 20 years ago and he has stuck to it. Big time respect. Once, when travelling together, I joked about getting a big ol' burger at Five Guys Burger and Fries. He replied, "Yeah, let's do it! I LOVE meat." We both got a big laugh over that. I asked him if he ever gets a craving for meat. He said, "sometimes I crave bacon, which is strange because I never cared at all about bacon before I became a vegetarian." I thought that was also pretty funny.
************
Earlier I stated that I feel like a scavenger because, unlike falcons, barracudas, and velociraptors, I don't kill animals for my own meat. On the other hand, I've seen humans who DO kill animals for their own meat and I was not impressed. Let me tell you about my one-time experience in an Upper Michigan deer hunting camp.
I was still in college at the time and I also held a part-time work-study job at the university. I was not a hunter and I'm sure I had never expressed a desire to ever go hunting, so it came as a bit of a surprise when my boss invited me along on a weekend deer hunt. "Why not?" I figured. I was open to new experiences and deer hunting seemed like it might be kind of interesting.
Oh yes, "interesting" is one word for it, that's for sure. "Crazy" is another one. "Totallymesseduponsomanylevels," is a better one. Here is a day-by-day account of the experience.
FRIDAY:
After I was done with classes and my boss (Perry) was done with work, we began the two hour drive to Perry's cabin in the southern part of Michigan's Upper Peninsula. It was a tiny shack with not much more than a bunk bed, a table & chairs, and a wood burning stove. We stopped there just long enough to throw some wood into the stove and light it up for some heat. Then we got back in the car and drove a few more miles to another cabin which belonged to Perry's friend.
Perry's friend was a dentist from Chicago and the cabin could better be described as a $500,000 house with log siding. It was the gathering place for about 15 hunters ranging in age from about 17 to 50. Perry and I joined them for drinks. And a few more drinks. Joking, laughing, and old hunting stories were as bountiful as the whiskey, brandy and beer. Of course, I had no hunting reminiscences to share, but I had some experience with alcohol consumption (after all, I was a college student) and I listened to the funny stories.
Somewhere around midnight the party dispersed, and several of us made drunken trips back to our respective cabins.
SATURDAY:
Just after sunrise Perry and I trudged about 100 yards through the snow to our hunting spot. I should say HIS hunting spot because I had no intention of shooting a deer. Besides, I didn't have a license or a gun.
The hunting spot consisted of a big bunch of apples strewn on the ground and a crude wooden tree house in a nearby tree. We climbed a ladder up to the tree house (deer stand) and there we sat--waiting for a deer to come to the apples where Perry could blast it into oblivion from above. So much for the noble idea of hiking through the woods all day in search of deer.
Not only did we just sit there doing nothing, we had to be silent so as not to scare off any deer. Plus, I was freezing my ass off. We never saw nor heard a single sign of a deer. After a couple hours of extreme boredom, we climbed back down and trudged back to the cabin, where we prepared to go back to the big cabin owned by the dentist.
Along the way we stopped at a gas station where I bought a small bag of corn chips. Little did I know that a bag of Fritos would be my only meal of the day.
Most of the same people from last night were already at the big cabin when Perry and I arrived. None of those hunters had any more luck than we did. It was probably only around noon, but the drinking was well underway. There was more laughing and joking and friendly ripping on each other. And more drinking.
At one point late in the afternoon, the dentist was doing something at the kitchen sink when he looked out the window at his barrel of apples in the back yard. He shouted, "HEY, it's a deer!" He quickly opened the window, grabbed his rifle, and took a shot right out the window. "DAMN! Missed him," the dentist lamented.
A while later, one of the younger guys got up and went into the bathroom. When it became apparent that he was in there longer than it should take to urinate, somebody yelled out "SHITASS!" Within seconds, almost everybody joined in the chorus, "SHITASS! SHITASS! SHITASS!" over and over again.
"Why are they calling that dude a shitass," I asked Perry?
"Because it means he's been eating solid food. He's supposed to be drinking, not eating."
Man, I sure was glad I wasn't the one who had to go. Then I questioned again, "so nobody eats around here?"
"Not until tomorrow. Then we have a huge feast."
SUNDAY:
Shortly after sunrise we repeated the ritual of trudging through the snow, climbing up to the deer stand, and sitting in boring silence. The results were exactly the same as yesterday, except that today I could add extreme hunger to the extreme boredom I was feeling.
Then back to Perry's cabin, back on the road, back to the dentist's big cabin. And sure enough, the feast was being prepared. It looked fantastic and seemed worth the wait. It was a veritable breakfast buffet, complete with meats and sausages and eggs and fruit and fried potatoes and I can't remember what else.
Noticeably absent from the menu was fresh venison.
************
Quite the "sport" hunting is. I learned a lot about it that weekend. If I ever had even the most remote interest in becoming a hunter, that experience put an end to it once and for all. Also, it reinforced my belief that only hunters who chase down an animal and kill it with their bare hands should be allowed to call themselves a "sportsman." There is nothing sporting about aiming a gun from whatever distance and shooting an animal that is completely unaware that it is competing in a "sport." To me that's too one-sided to be called a sport--almost like playing tackle football with a two-year-old kid. I'll just get my meat from the butcher shop, thank you. At least ranchers, meat processors and butchers don't think of themselves as sportsmen.
************
In summation, I cook lots of meat. I eat lots of meat. My body needs meat. I listen to the needs of my body. Like most addicts, I feel guilty about it. Thank you for reading, and I'll see you next time right here on the Chef G. Cooking Channel.
No comments:
Post a Comment