quazi-vegetarianism, complete with a burger

I certainly don’t claim to be a full on vegetarian, but for all intensive purposes I am one, in theory. I basically reserve the right not to eat food that I don’t know where it came from and for me, meat is the scariest. See, I have done a lot of reading over the past few years about the food industry in this country (notably: Omnivore’s Dilemma, Animal Vegetable Miracle, Slow Food Nation, In Defense of Food, & Eating Animals). All touch on various aspects of factory-farming and the awful resulting consequences. It was Omnivore’s Dilemmas that taught me all about what was in the vast majority of the meat is in the US (corn & oil) and because after all, we are what we eat, animals too are what they eat, and when we eat animals, we are what they eat; and I certainly I have no interest in being any part oil or hybrid corn.
Eating Animals was the last book that I read and the one that really set me over the edge as the book really got down to the way the animals were grown, treated and processed. But let’s get something straight, I am not really the type to think hunting is murder, but I do care about the way we treat them. I think that even though we might just be raising cattle, hogs and chickens on farms for the sole purpose of food, they deserve a respectful life. We treat them as a commodity now in this country, and their environments and ways of life that have been drastically altered over the past 50 years. Did you know that the largest contributor to environmental pollution and climate change are the factory farms where cattle/chickens/hogs are stuffed with hybrid-corn (not the corn that is sold fresh in stores, but the type that is inedible to us and raised in the Midwest on mostly oil & pesticides), and injected with hormones to grow faster and fatter? This meat is the stuff for sale at Costco, Safeway, QFC, Kroger and Whole Foods- most of the places that we traditionally have bought food and in most of the places we eat out, unless otherwise noted.

This begs the question, what happened to cattle that feed on grass (which their bodies are designed by nature to do), the chickens that were able to roam and develop the use of their legs, or the hogs that were able to play in the mud and lead active lives? We made them go away. We have basically demanded the factory-farms into existence because as Americans we have wanted more meat and at lower prices. This country eats more meat than any civilization, ever, and weird too that our generation might be the first to have a lower life expectancy than our parents or grandparents. I am not saying that meat is the only concern, but it’s time that we became responsible and know what’s in our food.

So that is basically a snidbit of why I claim quazi-vegetarian status. I just have to know what is in my food and where it comes from. I want to be able to respectfully decline food if I can’t figure out what’s in it. This somewhat infuriated my parents when I first announced it since they interpreted it as some food not being good enough for me (I believe the term they used was “snob”). But the more we have talked about the more they have become interested in it, enough so that the other day they announced that they were buying ½ cow (slaughtered) from some friends up the road who raised their cattle solely on grass. :) Change is happening... I just love chatting with people at farmers markets about how they raise and produce their food. That being said, I love me some tasty meat, if I know where it comes from and what it has been fed. I had the opportunity once to go down to Argentina, where the meat there is all literally free-range and grass feed. It was amazingly delicious and had more favor than anything I had ever had in the states (go figure).

So last week, in my relatively new state of quazi-vegetarianism, I was craving a burger. I believe cravings too are some sort of barometer of what your body needs, and sometime we all need a burger! Granted I perhaps would not give in to every ice cream/chocolate/cake craving I have, I try and give into what feels right, and at this point, for whatever reason, I was absolutely CRAVING a burger.

So I set out to the Queen Anne farmers market and there found some fresh meat, cheese, lettuce and bread, all of which are critical ingredients for what I was craving. The meat was from a farmer up in Skagit valley whose cattle ate grass all year round, never any corn, and never any hormones or antibiotics. The cheese was also from there and I sampled about ten of her cheese before I found just the right one. :) Then the lettuce was just romaine from a local organic farmer, and the bread was from a local bakery.

I don’t feel like I need to go through the steps of making a burger here as I feel this is somewhat common knowledge (but let me know if you need help). I basically grilled the burger for about 4 minutes each side on an outdoor grill (about medium-rare), toasted the bread on the stove in a pan, ripped apart some lettuce, coated one side of the bread with some leftover aioli and the other with some HFCS-free ketchup (because let’s face-it, what’s a burger without ketchup?). There you have it, that easy. And you know what? It was simply fantastic.

Total Prep/Cooking Time: 5-10min

Total Cost: $20 (with enough for about 2-3 burgers or more)

Funny story: Last weekend I was at a new restaurant in Ballard whose head chef is fairly famous and was working the kitchen that night. I wanted to know where the chicken came from for a certain dish so our waiter went and asked him. He didn’t know. I thought: "Interesting, he should know" and respectfully declined ordering the dish. But then I don’t think the situation was helped when Tracy asked if the chickens also played Sudoku when and if they were roaming freely… way, to mock me T!

So yes, I might be annoying with my "I gotta know where the food comes from", but I believe that by asking it will help make it clearer to shopkeepers and food providers that more and more people care, and this will help change the way food is produced in this country. And if you haven't seen it already, please stop whatever you are doing and go watch Food Inc (you can rent it on itunes)...

Next up on the blog: Back to the basics with Alice.