Half-Fast Food

I tried being a vegetarian once. It lasted a couple of years, but I got tired of rice and beans. The fact is, it just wasn't me, I'm a carnivore, and yet, I admit, I feel for the animal. I keep thinking of the cow with its big sad eyes staring at me. I empathize with lobsters. I feel pangs of guilt if I kill even a spider, though I would never want to consume one. And yet I eat my meat rare. Or as my brother says, "just passed through a warm kitchen." Once, in Italy, my Italian mother-in-law insisted on getting our Christmas turkey ruspante, directly from a farmer, because, she said, it was superior to what you bought from the butcher. A couple of days later she called to say the turkey was at her house, ready for me to come pick up. I arrived to find the turkey very much alive, strutting around the kitchen gobbling excitedly, towering over my wife's grandmother while the dog cowered in a corner. I drove home with the turkey sitting next to me in the passenger seat, watching the passing scenery. More than one car almost drove off the road. The portiere and his wife had to handle the execution, without my assistance. I mourned my new friend, and yet I still managed to get past my grief when he arrived at the table cooked.