Liver! … And Why I became a Vegetarian
The most horrible food I have ever tasted, truly the most
foul, including the time I tried Scottish Haggis, is my own mother’s home
cooked liver. Actually, at the time I
kind of liked the haggis. But I was like
maybe nine years old and when hungry I was known to eat cold burnt toast. I once ate an entire package of saltine
crackers with nothing but butter spread thickly on each cracker.
But my mother’s fried liver and onions? Kill me first. My brother and sister and I held a meal less
vigil every night we even smelled her liver and onions. In fact many of those nights I had to leave
the house. It tasted like a slab of
burnt blood. Which is to say I have
never actually tasted a slab of burnt blood, but that is what my imagination
conjures up. Burnt blood. Dry, ugly brown, chalk-like burnt blood.
I did like fried onions, but if they had shared the pan with
her liver, well, forget it.
My father, who grew up on a farm just like my mother, loved
her liver and onions. He was a big man
though and had a big man appetite and wasn’t much of an epicure. Meat and potatoes. Steak, nearly raw. Lots of bacon. He would eat a brick if it had bacon on it. And he did not have any aspirations to become
an epicure. Down home on the farm and he
liked his food that way.
Now my father did become an important man in the U.S.
military, but his food preferences remained plain. My mother became more ambitious in her desire
to experience a wider range of delicacies and epicurean delights as my father’s
position rose. And as her children we
were treated to, or experimented upon – depending on your view point – lots of
different world cultural food like adventures.
I did try fried grasshoppers – not bad. Garden snails – quite good. English eel – never again. Actually we lived in England for three years,
so I tried a lot of English treats. Most
of it was pretty bland or simply, “Why would you cook anything like this?” The only vegetables the English ate (at that
time) were boiled into a sludge.
Generally a kind of puke beige sludge.
With globs of some kind of
meat lard blobbishness floating in it.
English cabbage – what is this? Bread pudding – loved that with their rum
sauce and raisins. Meat pies – okay, but
what are those green pills in it? Oh,
those are peas. Why are those peas so
damned hard? Bangers ‘n mash – salty and
stay close to a restroom. Fish ‘n chips
(wrapped in a newspaper) with salt ‘n vinegar – delicious. Fish ‘n chips – best thing about
England.
Now Scottish food is quite different, starting with the
haggis. The best thing about Scotland,
other than being quite beautiful when it ain’t raining – and it’s raining most
of the time – is the scones. Scottish
scones are almost worth the trip alone.
But this blog is about how and why I became a vegetarian,
almost forty years ago.
Pretty simple really.
I married a vegetarian and she didn’t cook meat. Wouldn’t even cook in a pan that had had meat
cooked in it. So all of the cookware I
owned at the time went into the garbage.
Had to buy all new stuff. But she
was a really, still is, good cook and after a few years I stopped thinking
about meat. So much so that now when I
even smell meat, my mind says, “What the hell is that?” My mouth does not water. Just conditioning, really. If you’ve never smelled coconut milk, you
wouldn’t think of it as a food.
My wife doesn't, nor has ever indicated, that she cared one way or another if I did chose to eat meat. Just not at home and she won't cook it.
I have experienced very good health all these years without
meat. I’ve done a lot of stuff that
requires pretty demanding stamina and never had a problem keeping up with or
even staying ahead of nearly everyone else.
So the argument that, as humans, we need to eat meat, I have found is
mostly bogus – at least in my life it has proven to be bogus. You do what you want, I don’t care.
It was mostly that liver though. After nearly forty years, just the smell of
cooking meat makes me think of my mother’s fried liver ‘n onions and I get queasy. Life is kind of funny that way. Sometimes, one very seemingly insignicant
experience can stick with us like forever and we can’t seem to overcome
it.
I uncovered, by mistake, a ground wasp hive and got stung
six times in a nano-second. Hurt like
bullets – not afraid of wasps. Still
hate liver. Can’t stand burnt oatmeal
cookies. Still love oatmeal cookies that
aren’t burnt. Still hate liver. Motorcycle fell over once and the muffler
burnt my leg right down to the muscle layer – still ride my bike. Still hate liver. Don’t eat meat, ‘cause it reminds me of
liver.
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