abstinence makes the tongue grow fonder.
I still eat eggs if they come from happy hens, make a hell of a scrumptious omelette, taught by my French stepmother Pierrette…requires a light touch, over whisking makes texture tough…the right vegan cheese melts lusciously inside middle…with a little Dijon…ah, my mouth waters.
I still eat honey from whatever origin, and the gelatin capsules for my fluoxetine come from hooves and hides , so I’m not a true vegan, just 99% plant based…yet I still long for:
blood-rare two inch sirloin steak with over-salted crispy fat, oh my gawds…salmon broiled or sautéed with lemon butter, salt sour with fat dripping over succulent omega 3 packed pink fish flesh…pork chops with apple sauce…oh yes, and gigot (French for leg of lamb) with garlic slivers embedded in pale rosy muscle…Peking duck on mooshi pancakes with sweet salty purplish spread…grease drips into beard, sheer heaven…not to mention escargots in spiraled shells covered with melted parsley garlic butter (unintentionally grossed out pre-prom dinner date with those, thinking I was cool)…decades later horrified my arachnophobic wife with deep-fried soft-shell crabs…one person’s delicacy another’s nightmares…an arthropod is an arthropod no matter how cooked…speaking of which don’t forget lobster plunged alive into boiling water, shell turning red to be cracked by nutcracker…
Dad taught me to eat eyes of broiled trout, crunchy, delish, another food with high gross out potential…don’t forget rare charbroiled hamburgers…red flaming hot chicken wings with blue cheese dressing…oysters on the shell slurped down with hot cocktail sauce, or juice of lovely lemon…oh yes, sushi dipped in soy sauce, dabbed with wasabi...once Dad thought wasabi was a vegetable and popped the whole mound into his mouth to end up dancing jerkily, waving at his mouth, saying “hot…hot…hot!”
Could go on and on and on…why give it all up? you ask…could talk of cruelty footprints, cow farts and climate change, cholesterol and heart attacks, but did not come to proselytize…
side bar: also gave up craft beers, neat dark rum, calvados, dark red wine with notes of tannin, goes so well with well ripened brie cheese…why give those up? Another poem I probably won’t write.
Don’t get me wrong, vegan is delicious when done right, perhaps enhanced by red meat deprivation…there is a whole wonderful world of flavor colors requiring no slaughterhouses or methane…
but I did not come here to proselytize…
~ Wry Welwood
10th of November 2021.
Written in response to Scrittura’s Wednesday prompt: bring in some food.
attn: J.D. Harms.
I am a quasi-Vegan, but I refuse to be militant.
~ww