Right now, I’ve got it in my head that I need to kick beef, too. It’s always struck me that consuming red meat is something like trying to get a train wreck through one’s body; it’s spectacular and awful and a mess to clean up. I’m sure there are arguments in favor of beef consumption in moderation, but I’m not sure I buy them. What’s more, I’ve been haunted lately by the ethics of the entire slaughter process — how horrific it is to think about the thousands of cattle being led to their demise, and how much sheer force is required to take a cow down (forgive the crude terminology). I know there’s nothing egalitarian about poultry or pork production, either, but something about beef gives me shivers.
So Good
The thing is, I’ve always taken great pleasure in the taste of beef — in all kinds of cooking. There are dozens of unbelievably satisfying dishes in Vietnamese cuisine in which beef plays a starring role, many of which I grew up eating regularly and with great alacrity. I’ve had beef in France and Italy and even in the culinarily-challenged United Kingdom and thought to myself each time, “This is living.” I’ve relished the taste of a great hamburger many, many times and, gawd, I’ve unabashedly driven far out of my way to get my hands on one.
I’m thinking a lot about this because I’m going to dinner tonight with friends at a restaurant in New York that, though not the most famous of its kind, is my favorite steak house in the city. The rib-eye steak there is gorgeous and decadent, and it’s going to take an herculean effort to resist it. I’m not sure I’ll be able to; in fact, I’m more confident that, afterwards, I’ll be filled with a stomach full of expensive red meat and a chest full of regret. Rationally speaking, I’m so sure that beef is cruel and inhumane, and that it constitutes a kind of velvet assault on my cardiac health, and yet I’m drawn to it. Jeez, if they only had a version of the nicotine patch for people trying to kick beef, I’d head to the pharmacy right now.
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