I’ve fallen off the wagon. I blame Greg – he fell first and dragged me down with him.
I did make a resolution that I would “sample” things when I had the chance, just for the sake of expanding my palate and increasing my knowledge about food. I’ve been doing that when the opportunity arose, but with little enthusiasm; the proscuitto and salami I had at the Green Link event didn’t wow me, the burger Greg ate last week grossed me out (I spit out the tiny bite I tried), and the massive brontosaurus-sized ribs he ate for lunch on Saturday made me think that I had maybe just lost the taste for meat. I got them down and it wasn’t gross, but it wasn’t a pleasant taste – just kind of… dank. Maybe that’s why ribs need so much sauce – to cover up the yukky grey taste.
Then we wandered into St. Lawrence Market and a nice man handed me free proscuitto.
I always had this running joke that I’d like to be a proscuittotarian. Pescetarians are folks who eat fish, but are otherwise vegetarian, pollo-vegetarians eat chicken. I wanted to be able to eat proscuitto. And somehow I always knew that proscuitto would be my downfall.
I tried to convince myself that the piece I had a couple of weeks ago was typical, and that I just found the stuff far too salty now. But then I had good proscuitto, and it was what I remembered it to be, and it was the one thing that I can honestly say I missed (other than the roast chicken I’ve been craving for the past few months which might also have to be rectified while I’m down and out and mercilessly having animals killed for my own hedonistic pleasure).
Something overcame me and I dragged Greg back and we bought the proscuitto.
I felt guilty about it almost immediately. I felt gulity bringing it home, I felt guilty today as I made sandwiches on ciabatto buns with buffalo mozzarella, sundried tomatoes and pesto, I felt guilty while I ate the thing. But I did eat it. And moaned with more guilt about it later.
Karma works in strange and humourous ways, though. Because it was only about an hour or so after I ate the sandwich made from a poor little pig, when my sinuses got all congested and my throat swelled up slightly and I remembered… I’m allergic to pork.
All of my other allergies have mostly disappeared in the past year since we moved from the house o’ black mold. Cheese is my friend again, even the blue stinky stuff, and ice cream and I are tentatively getting cozy. I sort of assumed the pork allergy was gone too. Not so much.
So that was my first and last dip into the pool of meat-eaters, at least in terms of eating a large amount of meat at once. Small samples don’t seem to set off my sniffer, but a whole serving certainly does.
In a way, it’s good. I almost think that every vegetarian should go off the wagon at least once to really appreciate where they are. I learned that I don’t really miss meat all that much, and that I don’t really like it that much anymore. I enjoyed the lovely ham sandwich as far as taste goes – it was definitely delicious, but I can likely go another seven years or more before I need proscuitto again, and between the guilt and the not breathing thing, it really wasn’t a worthwhile trade-off.
I might still need that roast chicken before I swear off the land animals completely, though. I can only hope I’ve developed an allergy to that too.