Swerve
I’m going vegetarian for a week. Being as huge of a carnivore as I was, one would think it would be hard. In actuality, it hasn’t been tough at all…the key thing I’ve noticed in pushing for vegetarian eating is to not eat out so much. For lunch I usually make my own sandwich, and I make extremely elaborate sammiches with fresh cucumber, red bell peppers, sprouts and pesto, it’s just damned good.
Why the sudden jump? Well…as I’ve mentioned in some past blog posting, I’ve been trying to add some veggie in my diet here and there and enjoying it. Most of that came from my realizing that if I take care of myself now, I could enjoy better health when I’m old instead of wishing I did that. Then over the weekend, I accidentally ran over a squirrel/chipmunk cute little furry creature while driving out to my hike. He kinda ran out from nowhere then paused in the middle of the road. We were going downhill on a one lane gravel road, I couldn’t swerve and the gravel didn’t help with sudden braking, I was fishtailing all over the place even at 10mph. So in the end, I ran over the poor thing. I screamed and hit the brake and screamed some more. Charlie went out to check on it, I followed behind crying. He got to it first and told me I didn’t want to see it. I went back to the car while Charlie moved the poor body off the side of the road. Needless to say I feel bad. How does a person make up for driving off to the forest and killing its creature? I honestly don’t know, but I figured not eating meat to honor the life of the little guy helps. It’s a small bandaid for my soul so I can sleep a little better at night.
I grew up in a traditional Chinese household where we raised random small farm animals (mostly chicken and rabbits) in our yard and killed them for food, so I’m not squeamish about whacking an animal here and there. I have deep respect for the animal that gave life for my food, I don’t pretend my food comes in faceless packages from the grocery store. My guilt comes not so much that I killed one of the forest creatures, it’s more that I killed it by accident for nothing. I told Charlie that had we been able to turn the creature to food, I would probably felt better. He said I could go back and cook it, but there’s not much meat in the thing. So a week’s worth of my sparing some other creatures life for one poor innocent life…if nothing else, the dead creature gained some good karma for his afterlife.
So far, I think the hardest thing about jumping to vegetarianism is the people around me. My meat-eating coworkers are constantly giving me grief that I’m causing a major cosmic imbalance by not eating meat. As one coworker puts it, “You were our spokesperson. Our star quarterback! We need you back on our team!” My sister is by far the worst. While I’m eating a veggie roll at her sushi bar, she’ll bring out dishes of sashimi, eat it slowly, and tell me about how amazingly fresh the wild sock-eye salmon are. Still, I have gone out to nice restaurants and I am pleasantly surprised with how many good vegetarian dishes there are out there when one cares to look.
In response to the hockeyman’s comment one of my previous post…I’d like to take credit for being a marketing genius…but before I even composed that post, the views on that one picture had been higher than ANY other picture in my collection. Yeah, I’ve got over 600 pictures from glorious hikes, rain, snow, fog, nature’s bounty, with many links to all the pictures from my blog. Nothing compares to a picture of two girls in very short skirts.
Hmmm, now that I think about these people taunting me about my new eating habits, I should warn them that I could run them over.
Edit: Random side note, I almost titled this post "TofuGirl" as a SteakGirl contrast...but then I remembered that's an extremely derogatory slang for lesbian in Chinese, so I figured I'll forgo the smart-ass naming.
Why the sudden jump? Well…as I’ve mentioned in some past blog posting, I’ve been trying to add some veggie in my diet here and there and enjoying it. Most of that came from my realizing that if I take care of myself now, I could enjoy better health when I’m old instead of wishing I did that. Then over the weekend, I accidentally ran over a squirrel/chipmunk cute little furry creature while driving out to my hike. He kinda ran out from nowhere then paused in the middle of the road. We were going downhill on a one lane gravel road, I couldn’t swerve and the gravel didn’t help with sudden braking, I was fishtailing all over the place even at 10mph. So in the end, I ran over the poor thing. I screamed and hit the brake and screamed some more. Charlie went out to check on it, I followed behind crying. He got to it first and told me I didn’t want to see it. I went back to the car while Charlie moved the poor body off the side of the road. Needless to say I feel bad. How does a person make up for driving off to the forest and killing its creature? I honestly don’t know, but I figured not eating meat to honor the life of the little guy helps. It’s a small bandaid for my soul so I can sleep a little better at night.
I grew up in a traditional Chinese household where we raised random small farm animals (mostly chicken and rabbits) in our yard and killed them for food, so I’m not squeamish about whacking an animal here and there. I have deep respect for the animal that gave life for my food, I don’t pretend my food comes in faceless packages from the grocery store. My guilt comes not so much that I killed one of the forest creatures, it’s more that I killed it by accident for nothing. I told Charlie that had we been able to turn the creature to food, I would probably felt better. He said I could go back and cook it, but there’s not much meat in the thing. So a week’s worth of my sparing some other creatures life for one poor innocent life…if nothing else, the dead creature gained some good karma for his afterlife.
So far, I think the hardest thing about jumping to vegetarianism is the people around me. My meat-eating coworkers are constantly giving me grief that I’m causing a major cosmic imbalance by not eating meat. As one coworker puts it, “You were our spokesperson. Our star quarterback! We need you back on our team!” My sister is by far the worst. While I’m eating a veggie roll at her sushi bar, she’ll bring out dishes of sashimi, eat it slowly, and tell me about how amazingly fresh the wild sock-eye salmon are. Still, I have gone out to nice restaurants and I am pleasantly surprised with how many good vegetarian dishes there are out there when one cares to look.
In response to the hockeyman’s comment one of my previous post…I’d like to take credit for being a marketing genius…but before I even composed that post, the views on that one picture had been higher than ANY other picture in my collection. Yeah, I’ve got over 600 pictures from glorious hikes, rain, snow, fog, nature’s bounty, with many links to all the pictures from my blog. Nothing compares to a picture of two girls in very short skirts.
Hmmm, now that I think about these people taunting me about my new eating habits, I should warn them that I could run them over.
Edit: Random side note, I almost titled this post "TofuGirl" as a SteakGirl contrast...but then I remembered that's an extremely derogatory slang for lesbian in Chinese, so I figured I'll forgo the smart-ass naming.
posted by SteakGirl at 11:20 PM
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