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.)