Grr....

[jarandhel]

So, the other day I got some Buffalo burgers at Wholefoods. Cooked them up for me and Dusk for lunch. (VERY good, btw.)

While I was still eating mine, our housemates came home. Almost immediately, I was confronted and asked not to leave plates with blood (from the defrosted meat) lying around the kitchen because we have a resident vegetarian. Now, I was going to clean up the kitchen (including this plate) as soon as I got done eating anyway, and if it hadn't been for one little thing this whole incident probably wouldn't have bothered me...

... but the thing is, the girls themselves left a dish FULL of bacon grease sitting on the kitchen counter for TWO DAYS. It was still there while they were complaining about the plate! How is liquified animal fat any less offensive to a vegetarian than a little bit of blood? And this got me thinking...

This vegetarian has sat down with me and her partner before as her partner and I have consumed a big fat christmas turkey, even taking a small nibble of it herself. She is not a vegetarian because of beliefs about cruelty to animals or anything like that, it's just a personal preference. So how is her vegetarianism at all relevant to the situation with the plate? It feels to me like her vegetarianism was not the issue, and was just being used as a weapon, and that bothers me... because I can't figure out what the underlying issue actually was. Considering their bacon grease dish, it certainly couldn't have been a cleanliness thing, unless they were being REALLY hypocritical. The whole thing just gets under my skin...

Comments

[silvaerina-tael.livejournal.com]

Fear of blood = a need to control the situation to get rid of it, perhaps? Even subconsciously most people have a fear of blood to some degree or another.

[ebonhost.livejournal.com]

I agree that it might be, specifically, a blood thing. The root might not be the vegetarianism that is was blamed on, but something else entirely. (And the person involved might be completely unwilling to look at their motives too closely, so they pick something that, in context, actually makes little sense.)

[jarandhel.livejournal.com]

Heh, blood-fear doesn't really make much sense to me. Then again, I think blood is tasty (though not fairly luke-warm or even cold animal blood, as this was.)

[ebonhost.livejournal.com]

Oh, it makes no sense to me, either. *grins* I'm the person who orders their steaks rare, receives them undercooked, and eats the half raw parts anyhow, though. (Mm... bloody steak...) I tend to be very primal, but I can see the 'ew' factor in other people. (Ken thinks the way I eat steak is pretty gross, for example.)

Another meat I'd suggest for you to try, if you can get it where you are, is moose. The meat is super-lean, and OMG tasty. I like it -way- better than beef for ground meat and roasts (and we used to buy our beef right off the hoof, no hormones, when I was growing up), but alas, getting a steady supply would be hard here. :(

[jarandhel.livejournal.com]

Possibly, though it was really a very small amount of blood. You don't get THAT much blood from just defrosting three burgers.

[silvaerina-tael.livejournal.com]

Maybe not, but with some people *any* amount will set them off with a whole host of ideas, most of which border of superstition. Never mind, that with a lot of meats, especially beef, red food colouring is added to give the appearance of it being blood when these products have been fuully drained and cleaned of such.

[jarandhel.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty sure in this case it was the real thing. These buffalo burgers came from Whole Foods and were supposed to be 100% organic, I believe. (And they were VERY tasty, though I was surprised at how damned fast they cooked... almost burned them by accident.)

[rangermorgiah.livejournal.com]

Ick, I am unconfortable with the situation. My diet is based on ethical/environmental/spiritual beliefs, so I would not like to see a plate of blood, but I also would not eat even a tiny piece of a dead animal intentionally.

That's the sort of thing that makes us seem crazy and annoying. Sorry to hear about it though :(

[jarandhel.livejournal.com]

Heh, don't worry, I've met quite a few sane vegetarians, this doesn't make me think all vegetarians are crazy or annoying. Just the one I live with, apparently. ;-)

[rangermorgiah.livejournal.com]

Fair enough :)

[ex-casteylan314.livejournal.com]

She's not much of a vegetarian if she'll sit and nibble your turkey. And the bacon, was that hers too?

I think Silvaerina's right, thst it's probably a fear-of-blood issue. There's also a lot of fear regarding raw meat and blood as being much more unhygeinic than cooked meat (the OMG-SALMONELLA!! issue), which I could understand if it was chicken blood or pork, but heck people eat rare beef with blood still dripping out of it so with beef/buffalo it's clearly not an issue. I don't think everyone realises that though. So it could well be that she perceived the plate of raw blood as being much dirtier/more dangerous than a plate of two-day-old bacon grease. A lot of this perception comes from fear-mongering in the press, even with "official" sources (it certainly does in the UK). Wrong, but not necessarily hypocritical.

[jarandhel.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure if the bacon was specifically hers, or if it was her partner's (her girlfriend is, like me and Dusk, NOT a vegetarian). With the turkey, I understand that's a once-in-a-very-great-while-around-the-holidays sort of thing.

You might be right about the percieved dirtier/more dangerous thing... not sure. Though I still think the fact that it hadn't even been out long enough for me to finish eating made that a bit silly. The fear of blood idea makes a bit more sense, I guess, though we're not really talking a lot of blood here... we're only talking the amount of blood (mixed with other juices) that comes from defrosting three burgers in the microwave.

[dancinglights.livejournal.com]

Enh. Squicking at that little of it at times is another part of how my diet went so veggie. On the rare occasions I ever cook with meat, I tend to not directly touch it at all when raw and make someone else handle the juicy dishes. That said, this also counts for bacon grease :P

[jarandhel.livejournal.com]

Perhaps that accounts for it, and the connection with vegetarianism, though I still don't understand her attitude towards the dish FULL of bacon grease sitting on the counter for two days as compared to the small plate. Personally, I'd think people would find liquified animal fat much more disgusting than a small bit of blood. Then again, I'm not sure how many people really understand that's what grease is...

[dancinglights.livejournal.com]

I think that's just the cooked vs. not cooked. Even if there isn't a real health concern, it's half a step more removed from a dead animal sitting in the kitchen.

[jarandhel.livejournal.com]

This is really just convincing me more and more that people have gotten too far away from their roots. There was a time when dead animals sitting in the kitchen was common, they were called dinner. Now that everything is prepared for us in advance by butchers and we just pick up meat at the markets, there seems to be an increasing disconnect in people's minds between animals and the meat the comes from them and ends up as our food, and any reminders like blood disturb them.

And yes, I realize that the last time I personally tried to help someone turn an animal into a food product, I ended up briefly fainting from the smell (got up again as soon as I hit the ground), but I still took the meat inside and washed it off and packed it for eating later. And it was YUMMY.

[dancinglights.livejournal.com]

This is really just convincing me more and more that people have gotten too far away from their roots.

In general, I agree. In specific, I have a weirder disconnect. The squickiness usually happens to me with anything dead unless it's a matter of necessity to deal with it. On the rare occasions that I'm personally craving meat, I'd far rather deal with a chunk of deer dripping into a fire than styrofoam-packaged sanitized ground anything. I'm beginning to wonder if it isn't a personal ethics and spirituality thing *closer* to my roots to not want to deal with it in this mass-produced factory farm system, or if I just got desensitized oddly during the ass-poor years in my early childhood when we were pretty much living at the shorehome and we'd catch and clean fish to eat so we wouldn't starve.

Sorry I've been harping on food so much lately. I'm trying to sort out my own feelings on food and prepackaged and dead things and such as my diet is naturally shifting and I'm floundering at people like my co-workers I go out to eat with who can't understand dietary restrictions without a 100% true all the time with a label they've heard of before explanation, even if I state health reasons. It's getting bizarre and annoying me and I'm sure I'll drag the ranting to my own journal at some point.

[jarandhel.livejournal.com]

Hmm, that's a good point. In your case, I think that's probably very true... in my housemate's case, quite the opposite. Personally, I'm almost addicted to chicken and the person that gets between me and Venison or Buffalo is liable to get a chunk taken out of them, but the real staples of my diet are probably potatoes, cheese, and pasta. Possibly rice and vegetables too at times, though I haven't made a rice dish in quite a while now. But I really couldn't imagine going vegetarian. Hell, the last vegetarian chili I tried eating almost made me throw up. Then again, I'm not really a fan of mushrooms, and I'm pretty sure it was a form of processed mushroom that was the meat substitute in that, judging by the texture.

And hey, don't worry about it, harping on food is fun and entertaining. I really have been meaning to get into talking about it more again, I'm *trying* to persuade myself to more back towards more wholefoods again now that I'm more or less settled in the area. Just need to get a job so I can actually afford them, as opposed to the cheapo pastas I generally pick up.

[dancinglights.livejournal.com]

Mm. I manage the more-whole-foods diet by saving what I can where I can on cheapo pastas and mystery vegetables from the asian market. It's a rather maddening balancing act that requires going to far too many stores. Bleah.

[jarandhel.livejournal.com]

Hehe, actually i did manage to pick up a lot of organic whole-wheat pasta from Giant recently... it was on sale, ten packs for ten dollars. I could have also gotten ten cans of tomato sauce for ten dollars, but it was a brand I hadn't tried before and I only got two of those and the rest of a brand I knew. As it turned out they were excellent. Definitely going to have to keep an eye out for that sort of sale again.

[dancinglights.livejournal.com]

Just watch out if you're going to buy the only-ten-cents-more-expensive new brands of organic anything; they've recently changed the laws to be far more lax about what can be called organic in the US, and a lot of companies are realising they can squeeze profit margin out of ever so slightly improving the production process and then charging more to stick a Friendly label on it. It *is* slightly better, but sometimes it just doesn't seem to be enough to be worth it.

Like the Safeway cookies I saw the other day containing Organic Modified Somethingorother. huhWHAT?

[ex-casteylan314.livejournal.com]

Yeah but most of the time people are not really rational about this sort of thing.