The Butcher and the Vegetarian: One Woman's Romp Through a World of Men, Meat, and Moral Crisis - Hardcover

Weaver, Tara Austin

 
9781605299969: The Butcher and the Vegetarian: One Woman's Romp Through a World of Men, Meat, and Moral Crisis
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 1605299960 ISBN 13: 9781605299969
Verlag: Rodale Pr, 2010

Inhaltsangabe

Growing up in a family that kept jars of bean sprouts on its windowsill before such things were desirable or hip, Tara Austen Weaver never thought she'd stray from vegetarianism. But as an adult, she found herself in poor health, and, having tried cures of every kind, a doctor finally ordered her to eat meat. Warily, she ventured into the butcher shop, and as the man behind the counter wrapped up her first-ever chicken, she found herself charmed. Eventually, he dared her to cook her way through his meat counter. As Tara navigates through this new world—grass-fed beef vs. grain-fed beef; finding chickens that are truly free-range— she's tempted to give up and go back to eating tempeh. The more she learns about meat and how it's produced, and the effects eating it has on the human body and the planet, the less she feels she knows. She embarks upon a sometimes hilarious, sometimes frightening whirlwind tour that takes her from slaughterhouse to chef's table, from urban farm to the hearthside of cow wranglers. Along the way, she meets an unforgettable cast of characters who all seem to take a vested interest in whether she opts for turnips or T-bones. The Butcher and the Vegetarian is the rollicking and relevant story of one woman's quest to reconcile a nontraditional upbringing with carnal desires.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

TARA AUSTEN WEAVER, a freelance writer and developmental book editor, started her popular food blog, Tea & Cookies, in 2006 and writes daily for food media blog, Chow.com. She serves on the executive committee of Litquake, San Francisco's annual literary festival, and pioneered the wildly successful Lit Crawl, an event that draws more than 200 authors and crowds of more than 5,000. She lives in San Francisco and Seattle.

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CHAPTER ONE

A First Flirtation with Meat

It is the week before Saint Patrick's Day, and the butcher shop is awash in green. There are shamrocks decorating the walls, bags of Irish soda bread for sale, offers of free cabbage to go with your corned beef. As the butcher rings up my purchase, he looks up at me.

"Have you ordered your corned beef yet?"

I have never eaten corned beef in my life, but I hesitate to tell the butcher this. He seems so friendly, like a kindly uncle, and I don't want him to think less of me. What is corned beef anyway? I am fairly sure there is no actual corn involved, but you never can tell. I pause, not wanting to come out and say it, but at last I do.

The butcher doesn't say anything, he just stands there, staring at me. Into the gulf of silence between us I toss an excuse, inadequate and offered lamely.

"I'm not Irish?"

He laughs. "You don't have to be Irish to eat corned beef!"

I then begin my confession, the one I shamefacedly pull out in situations like this. "I grew up in a vegetarian household. I don't know what to do with large pieces of meat. They scare me." Understanding begins to dawn on his face.

"If you need any suggestions for how to cook things," he says, "I can help."

I laugh. Me--cook meat? The idea is actually funny.

"Maybe I'll just start at one end of the shop and cook my way to the other," I joke. "I could do a different cut each month." The butcher laughs too, but he is serious in his offer. The idea is terrifying and slightly ridiculous to me, but I realize that, as I leave the store, a seed has been planted.

Could I really learn to cook meat? Would I even want to?

The bigger question, of course, is how does a vegetarian find herself in a butcher shop in the first place? I can count on one hand the number of butcher shops I've been in--two, maybe three. There's never been a need. I don't buy or cook meat, it's as simple as that.

Unlike most vegetarians who adopt the lifestyle as adults or in an act of youthful rebellion, I was raised meat free from birth. My diet consisted of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and tofu, not a bit of flesh in sight. While our neighbors sat down to meat loaf, hot dogs, or fried chicken, my family was tucking into plates of steamed vegetables and brown rice. By the age of 10, I was an expert on millet, barley, and buckwheat. I know the technical difference between tofu and tempeh, but nothing in my background prepared me for blood or bones.

What am I doing in a butcher shop? I can answer that question in two words: doctor's orders. It certainly wasn't my idea.

The problems started when I was about 12--mild fatigue and weight gain after a childhood where I had been lean and active. The doctors diagnosed me as having a low-functioning thyroid gland and prescribed a supplement to correct it. My symptoms persisted, even on the medication. I woke up tired every morning and couldn't lose weight. Around this time I was given a questionnaire that asked: If you could spend a day doing anything in the world, what would it be? Other kids wrote horseback riding or Disneyland. My answer: sleep.

I continued to be active, as much as possible. I ran cross-country in the fall and swam laps before school. As I got older I worked as a backpacking instructor in the summers. I watched my diet as well. Despite plenty of broccoli and salads with no dressing, I remained plump, the only round member of the cross-country team.

My doctor didn't seem worried. Once I started on the thyroid medication my lab results returned to the normal range. According to the numbers, I was fine. The fact that I didn't feel fine seemed a lesser concern.

I muddled through as best I could, exercising and dieting the way they told me to in the magazines. I hoped that if I worked hard enough, I might look like the women I saw in those glossy pages: beautiful, sought after, smiling, happy. At the age of 12, I was waking up early to shower, don a leotard, and do calisthenics before sitting down to a breakfast of half a grapefruit and a slice of dry whole wheat toast.

Still my metabolism wouldn't cooperate. In high school I had a brush with anorexia that lasted about 4 hours. When I skipped breakfast and lunch and came close to fainting in my fourth-period journalism class, I realized that going without food wasn't an option for me. Eating healthfully seemed my best hope, though that didn't work either.

I continued to consult doctors. An endocrine specialist I saw after college told me to limit my carbohydrates and eat more protein. I was living in Japan at the time and horrified my friends and colleagues there by turning down bowls of rice. Instead I ate cartons of low-fat cottage cheese, blocks of tofu, and plenty of vegetables. I even ate fish, which I've never liked. Nothing made a difference. I was always tired, my weight 10 to 20 £ds over where the charts said I should be.

When I returned from Asia, I consulted a naturopathic doctor. He put me on a series of herbal tinctures ordered from Europe, daily doses of barley green powder and rice protein. There were endless tests: blood, saliva, and a hair sample sent off to a faraway lab to check for abnormal levels of heavy metals.

The results seemed to mystify my doctor. More than once he called the lab for confirmation because he had never seen anything like it. I had weird hormone levels, sky-high progesterone ("No wonder you can't lose weight," he said). Perhaps it was the shampoo I was using, he suggested, or a body lotion. I might be sensitive to such things. The lab said they had seen cases like it before.

I systematically discontinued and spoke with the manufacturer of every product that came in contact with my skin, to see if it might be the source of this excess progesterone. They all told me it couldn't possibly be their products making me sick.

Things got worse as time passed. I grew more and more exhausted. Some mornings I woke up and put on my running clothes, as usual, and walked the half block to Golden Gate Park and the beginning of my daily run. I'd stand at the corner waiting for the light to change, and I knew I didn't have it in me. My legs felt weak, my head was light. I couldn't even trust myself to walk the route. What if I passed out and some stranger found me unconscious and crumpled on the sidewalk? I turned around and shuffled the half block home, blinking back tears. I fell into bed, pulled the covers over me, and wept.

When a friend of mine recommended her acupuncturist, saying "She changed my life," it got my attention. Perhaps Chinese medicine held the key to my mysterious health problems. What did I have to lose? I made an appointment.

That afternoon my pulses were timed, my tongue inspected. The acupuncturist told me that my system was weak. This, of course, was no surprise to me.

I should avoid raw foods, she told me, they are hard to digest. Ginseng tea with ginger should be drunk each morning to give warmth. She gave me a small bag of herbs specially selected for my constitution. These are important, she said. They were to be stewed in chicken stock. I should make the stock myself, from chicken bones I could buy at the nearby butcher shop. They weren't on display, but I could ask for them.

"But I don't really eat meat," I explained somewhat apologetically. I always feel bad letting people down.

The acupuncturist brushed off my protest.

"Your system is weak," she repeated. "You need to prioritize your health-- you need to take care of yourself."

Have I not been taking care of myself?

Faced with such a barely veiled accusation, I did the only thing it seemed I could do. I went to the butcher shop.

Drewes Bros. Meats on Church Street in San Francisco is one of those old- school butchers: part meat...

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Verlag
Rodale Pr
Erscheinungsdatum
2010
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
1605299960
ISBN 13 
9781605299969
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Anzahl der Seiten
228
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
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