The Food I Eat

I wish I could say that I wrote and rewrote this post, hoping to get it just right and explain all my reasons for what I’m about to tell you, but I just didn’t. In fact, I didn’t do a whole lot of soul searching to come to the decision I did, which might surprise some folks. Don’t get me wrong, this decision is one that will have a decent impact of my life, and because I didn’t agonize over it doesn’t mean that I take it lightly or didn’t think it through.  I did. In the end, though, I just don’t know that it’s that big of a deal.

Enough of a teaser?

I started eating meat again. After something like 15 years without it. One day I was at a sushi restaurant and I just really wanted a piece of tuna sushi. I don’t know what came over me, but I knew that I really wanted it. I kept staring at those little boats floating around the sushi bar with the pretty rolls, and then looked down at my kind of pitiful looking plate that had an avocado roll and some inari sushi, and I wanted to eat “real” sushi instead. So I did. Not much fanfare, I just picked up the plate and popped it in my mouth. It was a brand new texture and taste for me. And it tasted amazing. And I didn’t get sick or feel nauseous and my world didn’t implode. I just ate it. And I kept thinking about eating more of it.

I didn’t just start chowing down on cheeseburgers after that. I initially thought to myself, I’ll just eat a few bites of fish here and there if I get the urge. Mex would cook us fish sometimes. Life went on. I was still mostly eating vegetarian meals. Then I craved chicken wings more and more (after 15 years chicken wings were the only meat dish I craved consistently). So I ate some. And they were good, too.

I could go on and on in this fashion telling you about different meals that I’ve tried. But I think what is more important is my reasoning behind this change. Spoiler alert: It’s really nothing profound. I just ate what I wanted to eat.

In my many years of vegetarianism, I never once felt deprived by not eating meat. I never really thought about it. I was perfectly happy with my tofu and quinoa and pasta. Aside from the smell of chicken wings still being intoxicating to me after all those years, I never craved meat. It didn’t gross me out or anything, I just didn’t give it much thought.

But lately I’ve been curious. I couldn’t remember what meat tasted like. And while I’ve read all the books, understand all the arguments for and against eating meat, I decided to just give eating meat a try. I didn’t just overnight lose all of my knowledge of factory farming practices, pollution, and health problems associated with meat consumption. I get it, really I do. I just started to open my mind a little bit more to the other side of the argument. While there are plenty of excellent reasons not to eat meat, I don’t know that I believe that it’s the only answer. I don’t know that eliminating an entire food group out of my diet is the best choice for me. I don’t want to feel restricted and I don’t know that my decision to eat meat is all that earth-shattering in the long run.

I want to be more of an everythingtarian* rather than a vegetarian. I don’t want to feel like I’m bound to any one type of diet. I find it funny that I have a very hard time feeling absolutely certain about most questions in life (think: politics, whether I want long hair or short hair, what my favorite book/movie/band is), yet I made the decision to completely cut out an entire food group from my diet full stop. It’s just not like me. (Side note: as you will know if you and I have ever debated anything, I have very strong feelings on many issues. I’m a lawyer and I like to think that makes me pretty good at arguing my points effectively. But just know that 9 times out of 10, I understand and sympathize with your point. I see the world as lots of grey rather than black and white.)

I don’t know that I’ll end up eating meat on a regular basis, or that I’ll continue to eat meat for any length of time. I might be a vegetarian again next week. But I don’t think I’ll call myself a vegetarian again. I think I’m over that label for now. “Vegetarian” is how I defined a lot of who I was for a long time. I was initially weary of shedding that title. I made the decision to stop eating meat at such a young age that throughout my teenage and adult years so far it has been the one label or decision that has followed me. Initially I wasn’t sure I wanted to give that identity up.

Ultimately I don’t think anything about me has really changed because I started eating meat and shed the vegetarian label. I just eat a wider variety of foods, that’s all. I think I’ll probably still stick to mostly vegetarian cooking, since I have absolutely no idea how to cook meat and since I  still firmly believe that a plant-based diet is incredibly good for me and good for the planet. My ideals haven’t changed. I still think Michael Pollan got it exactly right when he wrote, “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” I don’t think that humans “need” to eat meat to be healthy. But I also don’t think I “need” to drink coffee to be healthy, but I sure enjoy it. <–Ethical vegetarians and vegans will gasp at this comparison, but I never found myself to be a vegetarian for animal rights reasons. That animals didn’t suffer as much because I ate a vegetarian diet was more of a bonus for me.

Different strokes for different folks.

So what does this all mean for Jessie Bea Eats? Well, you might be seeing recipes for meat featured. As I said, I have absolutely no idea how to cook meat, so there might just be some trials and errors featured for a while.This isn’t going to become a steak and potatoes blog, though. I’m still a huge fan of a plant-based diet and will likely be featuring many vegetarian meals rather than meat-based meals. But if you’re offended by recipes featuring meat or pictures of it, I get that you might not want to keep reading my site. I have always read plenty of omnivorous blogs, watch cooking shows like Top Chef and read non-veg cookbooks for inspiration, but that’s just me.

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*The term ‘everythingtarian’ is shameless stolen from Holly’s blog, The Healthy Everythingtarian. I dig her approach to eating.