A Onetime Vegetarian

On Sunday, my boyfriend and I made fettuccine bolognese with three kinds of meat, all from the farmers market (ground veal from Smith Meadows Farm in Berryville, VA, and ground pork and bacon from Cedarbrook Farm in West Virginia). This was very exciting for me, since I recently ended an 18-year streak of vegetarianism (well, pescatarianism) for partly this reason.

I stopped eating meat cold turkey (pardon the pun; I can't help myself) in eighth grade after doing a report on animal rights and factory farming. I never really missed meat, though my family thought I would crack the next time a major holiday rolled around and my dad made ham (which, by the way, I ate last Christmas for the first time since then—I forgot how good it was!). But I wasn't even really tempted, until recently.

Two major factors influenced my decision to eat meat again. One was Michael Pollan, Barbara Kingsolver, and the similar writers who are advocating for a more sustainable approach to eating real foods, including meat, and in some cases growing them yourselves, or at least having a relationship with the people who grow your food and knowing more about where your food comes from. I was already buying much of my produce from the farmers market, and I started thinking it might be worth trying to incorporate a bit of humanely, sustainably raised meat into my diet.

The second factor was an increasing desire to try new things. I read somewhere in high school that the Japanese have a belief that every new food you eat adds 75 days to your life. I can't for the life of me find this on Google now, but it definitely stuck with me that I was choosing a very limited path by eschewing all meat. Over the past few years, when asked why I was a vegetarian, I would answer honestly: habit. Habit did not seem like a very compelling reason to avoid trying new things.

So, I started slowly trying various kinds of meat, starting with a bite of duck from a friend's plate at a Thai restaurant. And since then, I have tried a lot of different things. A. Lot. I would venture to say I will try almost anything (that goes for non-meat items too). Though I am qualifying the word "anything" to ward off absolutely ridiculous suggestions, I have already eaten head cheese, beef tendon, pig's ear, tripe, sweetbreads, and lamb brains, so I'm not sure what is left.

I haven't loved everything, but I have also not regretted trying anything. In fact, it's been really exciting having a whole new food world open up for me and gaining new favorite foods, not to mention winning the respect of hard-core foodies and/or adventurous eaters.

But to get back to the fettuccine bolognese, one thing I had not yet tried was buying and cooking meat that I knew for sure was raised locally in a way that was humane and environmentally sustainable. And I am glad that I did, because the pasta was delicious.

We basically used this Mario Batali recipe, though we added extra bacon, did not include ground beef, used extra carrots instead of celery (because we didn't have any celery), skipped the broth, and added extra tomatoes. The carrots and onions were also purchased at the farmers market, from Twin Springs Farm, one of my favorites.