The Animal Question

The trouble with finding your 'soy' mate

Internet scams are pretty sophisticated; here's one targeting vegetarians looking for love:

Recently I was the victim of a dating service scam. I want to make people aware of this company because they prey on special-interest groups such as vegetarians.

via vegangirlnextdoor.wordpress.com

Sad story, told in a rambling, entertaining sort of way, and it brings me to this question: Vegetarians and vegans, would you date a meat eater? And meat eaters, vice versa?

Back in the early 90s when I was a staunch vegetarian, I had trouble dating meat eaters because when people eat meat, especially red meat, regularly, their breath has a tendency to smell like rancid meat. I think I might be 'smell sensitive,' or something, as I often detect scents that others seem to miss (I think it's possible that yoga practice keeps my sinuses free and clear), but still, bad breath is a pretty big deal, and no one wants to smell rancid meat. I never was as strict as a vegan I knew who refused to eat in a house where meat had been served, even if the host was serving only vegetarian for her visit. She wouldn't eat with utensils that had touched meat, no matter how clean they were.

That seemed rather judgmental and unnecessary to me. It limited her social sphere for sure.

Remembering an old St. Louis veg icon

The first restaurant I dined in as an adult was the Sunshine Inn, a vegetarian cafe in St. Louis’ Central West End. It was 1990, and I’d been adopted by a group of lefty activists that coalesced in and around the organization MoPIRG. As I’d recently converted to vegetarianism, they were thrilled to introduce me to the Sunshine Inn.

The Sunshine Inn was rustic wood tables and art by local artists and an entranceway crammed with leftist newspapers, pamphlets, and notices. The group of us sat at a large, round oak table. There was a basket overflowing with bread from a local bakery—whole wheat rolls studded with sunflower seeds. Tremendous bowls of salad with chunks of tofu, broccoli, and cauliflower were passed, as was crusty pizza and something called a mushroom curry pocket. I’d never before seen vegetables featured as the main dish. I’d never eaten anything made with tahini, as the salad dressing was. I’d never tasted spices used in such eclectic abundance. These activists were the happy sort, not doomsayers; there were moments of hilarity and great belly laughs. The women ate as heartily as the men, and one woman, Alexandria, a hearty Greek, turned to me at the end of the evening and, clasping her supposedly expanded waistline, pronounced that she was sporting a “food baby.”

            The Sunshine Inn used to be on Euclid Avenue in the Central West End, a very old neighborhood in St. Louis with gaslight-era griffin streetlights, the roads still showing cobblestones in patches under the asphalt. There are rainbow bumper stickers on the cars, Tibetan prayer flags on the apartment entrances. In recent years, the neighborhood has slipped toward the upscale end of the spectrum, and sadly, the Sunshine Inn has closed. But for the 12 years I lived in St. Louis, the Sunshine Inn was a culinary sanctuary. We held political meetings at Sunshine; I’ve had important discussions with friends there, over a bowl of chick pea stew or veggie lasagna. I remember eating cauliflower-cheese soup while struggling to tell a friend about my mother wasting slowly away from anorexia, to find words for that which is unspeakable. I used to eat lunch alone there so that I could write. My husband took a birthday lunch there, also alone, during a period we still call ‘the waiting,’ when he’d ended his relationship with his girlfriend and was waiting to know if he and I would get together. It was a good place to eat alone. The wait staff wasn’t overly attentive, and the tables were arranged such that one doesn’t feel conspicuous without dinner companions. There was a little elevated section up a short flight of wooden stairs. It creaked as diners walked by, but the booths were comfy, and there was always a feeling of solidarity in an entire restaurant full of people who’d chosen, for this meal anyway, not to eat meat.

That 'meat' you're eating was once an animal

I was mulling over names for this blog, all of them variations using the word "meat." A couple of years ago, I wrote something called Meat: A Memoir, so it had to be "meatmatters.com" (taken), "meatyoueat.com" (redundant, and too easily confused with a porn site), or "themeatquestion.com." I'd settled on the latter but decided to sleep on it.

I woke up this morning realizing that I'd taken the animals out of the equation. What I mean is, once an animal becomes "meat," it's edible. Call it the semantics of cognitive dissonance. In order to make Lulubelle the cow mentally digestible, she must become meat.