You are probably wondering why this is being posted much later than usual and you may have spent your Monday upset that you did not find a silly story posted here. Well, read on to learn why there was a delay and just know you should either blame Williamsburg or a decision I made a little over ten months ago.
Last April while eating lunch at a beer garden in Astoria (yes, I sometimes go to Queens), one of my lunch companions made a passing reference to the book Eating Animals. He had not read the book, but said reading the book had convinced someone he knows to stop eating all meat. The little he said made me think I should read this book. In the preceding year, I had read all the Michael Pollan books and actually found myself eating more meat than I had been for years – I was just being more careful about the meat that I ate and I even went so far as to take a class to learn how to fully prepare a
suckling pig (this was my effort to get into the concept of knowing where my food comes from). This Eating Animals book apparently covered some of the same topics as Michael Pollan and, since I
had enjoyed Jonathan Safran Foer’s other books, I decided this would be my next book. Now this is not a book review, so I am not going to get all into what I thought of the book and quote some critical sentence. This is the story of why I am posting this late, so I will cut to the point and tell you that reading this book made me decide to give up eating meat (including fish, but not including eggs and dairy – I eat eggs every day for breakfast and don’t know what it would take for me to give that up. Probably cholesterol issues). This decision was not the biggest sacrifice – I have never been a big meat eater and almost never cooked it for myself, but I always ate what was served to me at a dinner party (I didn’t want to be that girl who announced her non-red meat eating status all the time) and I have (had?) a real love for bacon and sausage (I once said to a group of guy friends “I will not say ‘no’ to sausage” without realizing how humorous this would be to them. They might still be laughing).
The first few weeks were a bit rough – I hadn’t figured out the right balance of protein and I was constantly hungry – but then I figured it out and found that I was feeling better and losing weight (I had replaced the meat with other protein and vegetables, so was probably consuming fewer calories). And when I hit the 6 month mark and was bikini ready for my annual vacation to the British Virgin Islands, I started to think about bringing meat back into my life. I started to think about it, but decided I didn’t need to risk being sick while on the best vacation ever and thought maybe I should just extend the meat ban to the end of the year. And when I hit the end of the year, I decided I might as well go for a few more months and make it an entire year free of meat. The past few weeks, I started thinking about when I would eat meat again – would it be on my trip to Nashville in May, would it be at brunch – and decided I couldn’t plan for it, I just had to wait for my moment and maybe, just maybe, that moment wouldn’t come and I would extend the meat ban indefinitely. At least that was the decision I made as of Sunday evening. I met friends for dinner at The Commodore in Williamsburg. This was my third attempt to eat at this place and I was nothing short of excited to get a table. I had wanted to eat there since I first ate at Pies 'n' Thighs on an evening that included incredible food and me standing at the register with a fake microphone interviewing people picking up take-out orders. Like many restaurants known for their fried chicken, The Commodore only had a few non-meat options, but many Zach Galifianakis look-alikes. I went for the Adult Grilled Cheese and loved every bite of pimento cheese and jalapenos. And when I woke up in the middle of the night sweating and feeling like I had an alien in my stomach, I hated every bite of pimento cheese and jalapenos. And when hours later I was feeling the same and repeating “Don’t throw up” to myself as I lay in bed staring at the toilet through the open bathroom door, I despised the Adult Grilled Cheese, Williamsburg and the Zach Galifianakis look-alikes.
I also despised my meat ban when I found out none of my fried chicken eating dinner companions met the same fate, but then I remembered the Zach Galifianakis look-alikes and decided to blame Williamsburg.
~ Rebecca
