Now Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived and bore Cain, saying, “I have gotten a man with the help of the Lord.”
—Genesis 4:1
Scrabbling around in our garage this week, I came across our old grill, and thought — a bit ruefully — that I’ve not only given up smoking, I’ve given up smoking turkeys. What next, grilled cheese? This is a vegetarian house, but the rules are fluid.
On Thanksgiving, I used to get up at 5 a.m., dust off the grill, fill the pan with water, add some mesquite chips to the charcoal, heave the turkey onto the grill, and try to squirt the lighter fluid and light the coals in the right order. Jeanne would have made some tasty marinade with which I’d baste the massive bird throughout the morning, watching it slowly turn that delectable brown color as the scent of roasting turkey spread around the neighborhood. The thought occurs to me that these turkeys weren’t vegetarians. They didn’t get those Butterball breasts from veggies.
Often when it was done I’d carry the bird proudly out to the park in front of our house, setting it on a table filled with other gifts for the neighborhood’s Thanksgiving banquet, featuring smoked fish, Virginia-cured ham, heaps of sweet potatoes, cranberries, and pumpkin and mince pies for the hungry pilgrims of Driftwood …
Jeanne became a vegetarian about 20 years ago. She had an ambiguous health scare, and wasn’t about to wait around to see what would happen: she read a lot of books and, despite being famous for her chicken Vindaloo, decided vegetarianism was the way to go. This seems to have been a wise choice, as at the advanced age of X, she’s one healthy whipper-snapper.
I too am healthier, as, not counting an occasional squirrel, no meat can enter our doors. Jeanne looks on this as win/win, as she often lets me talk her into going out to dinner, where she enjoys her Caesar salad with salmon, while tossing meatballs to me like fish to a gaping pelican at the Pier (now also closed, come to think of it).
It’s difficult to debate a vegetarian. Jeanne and many other “near-vegetarians” eat fish, particularly salmon, for their health, which seems a tad contradictory — but “I won’t eat anything that screams when you kill it” is pretty tough to argue with. The idea of my chicken sandwich shrieking like Maria Sharapova makes me hesitate. Electric chairs would be expensive, and injections with poison would make chickens inedible. Besides, vegetarianism seems good for our environment, in a way that cattle ranches and chicken coops aren’t, so pointing out a few philosophical inconsistencies doesn’t cut much cheese.
Like many of my Tea Party friends, when cornered I often turn to the Bible. But this, too, poses problems on the subject. Cain, as we know, was Adam and Eve’s first-born, followed closely by Abel, both brought safely into the world without Obamacare. Cain was “a tiller of the ground,” and Abel, not wanting to copy his brother, raised sheep. Violence then entered the world — via males: that seems right — when Cain beat Abel to death because God accepted Abel’s offering of roast lamb but turned down Cain’s vegetarian medley.
One would naturally think that Cain, the vegetarian, was right, being the first-born, and so, we’ve been taught by psychologists, an over-achiever. But why did God turn his vegetables down? From the very Beginning, it seems to have been a case of De gustibus non est disputandum.
I’ve therefore decided to follow the Greeks, who are much clearer, though not as interesting, on the subject. Their general advice — summed up by Aristotle — was to follow the “golden mean,” moderation in all things, guided by wisdom and experience. You can see why the overheated Tea Party prefers the Bible to Plato’s Symposium. Therefore I’ve decided to mostly join Jeanne, and eat much less meat, so long as I don’t have to go cold turkey.
Then the Lord said to Cain, “Where is Abel your brother?” He said, “I do not know; am I my brother’s keeper?”
—Genesis 4:9
This article appears in Nov 28 – Dec 4, 2013.