January 2nd, 2008
Last night my cousin came over and cooked dinner for me and Husband. It was a… strange experience. He’s an awesome guy, and the socializing part was very good. We don’t see him enough and I was really happy to have him visit us. And how great is it to have someone bring groceries over and make cooking a social thing? I have talked before of my sort-of spiritual feelings about what it is to cook for others and break bread with them, and always feel honoured to have someone provide me with my meal. We talked athiesm, vegetarianism, cooking, our love lives… it was a very good night and I hope to do more like it soon.
The weirdness had to do with the food. The cousin has been making the switch to vegetarianism slowly, cutting out most poultry and red meats, and even cutting down on seafood. I of course think this is great, and sympathized with the difficulty of giving up favoured meat dishes (late night shwarma is his). But despite his progress, he’s still stuck in that meat eater mindset where there needs to be meat or a meat place holder on the plate. In other words, dinner’s not dinner unless there’s a central and most special item of food, which is a very traditional Western way of eating (meat and two veg, anyone?). If you eat no meat at all, this can be difficult to achieve. Which is why Husband and I eat a lot of stuff like stews, curries, pastas, big salads, and the like. No central item present or required. Or, we eat more casually, like a tapas restaurant, with several different items to choose from but no one main thing (a favourite for us is a selection of cheeses, crackers, veggies and dip, olives, etc.). Either way you get all your calories, but there is a distinctly different (and many would say inferior) feeling to eating a meal with no “star.” So I wasn’t surprised that he proposed a dinner that was as meaty and traditionally structured as allowable for me and Husband.
The cousin decided we’d have fried oysters and a pasta with mussels in it. I love oysters like crazy, and mussels are good too, so I decided that, in the spirit of greed for tasties and being a gracious host, I would temporarily suspend my decision to avoid the bivalves and eat what was being offered. (Last time we spoke to the cousin, Husband and I were both still eating bivalves. I have since quit.) The cooking was fun – my cousin is a young bachelor and an inexperienced cook, but since dinner was his idea and he did all the planning and shopping, I was formally designated assistant chef. I did do some sneaky doctoring of the meal to make sure it went off well, but without stealing the cousin’s thunder. A few well placed questions about timing, some salt, some sugar – and between the two of us, we put together a very good meal.
However. (You knew there was a however.) I did experience a certain measure of horror at watching my cousin handle raw oysters and then handle everything else in my kitchen with gay abandon. I was transfixed, watching his shiny, oyster-slime covered hands flit hither and thither around my counters, salt shakers, drawers, hand towels. I was making a mental list of what would need to be soaped off later for about half an hour before I gave up and realized I’d just have to wash the entire place down. Anyone who knows about food safety knows you can’t let meatiness remain on any surface in your kitchen or it rapidly becomes dangerous. But when you’re not used to even having meat in the house, there is a gut level reaction to meat juices everywhere in addition to your cognitive acknowledgment of the risks. It makes me sound like an ungrateful recipient of the favour of being cooked for, but I was pretty grossed out.
The other trouble with last night is that I was still dealing with some kind of bug that was, pardon me for being indelicate, causing some diarrhea. My tummy was a little upset in general, but then I went and had some cocktails (we were low on supplies and all the liquor stores were closed, so we cleaned up our dregs and had one caesar, one hearty margarita, and one rye and ginger each), which is never good for me. I can get hung over from two drinks. And then came dinner – which was delicious, and oh god do I love oysters. But oysters are probably the richest meat in existence – richer than lamb, richer than anything I’ve ever had. Rich, fried meat on a habitually meatless belly that’s prepped for hangover and also sick? Just imagine what your gut would do. It all lead up to me hurrying my cousin out at the soonest polite opportunity and informing Husband: “I couldn’t wait for him to leave so I can go sit on the toilet, fart and contemplate vomiting.”
This morning I got up, finished the dishes, and proceeded to clean the kitchen. I soaped and rinsed all surfaces, and then sanitized them with a dilute bleach solution. Every time I thought of oysters my stomach did a flip flop, from memory of the discomfort of digesting those rich bastards and the disgustingness of knowing their juices were all around my normally very clean kitchen. You really do start to see meat as unclean when you stop cooking with it. It is no longer normal for me to have blood or muscle on my cutting boards, pans, or utensils – and my sense of that stuff’s dirtiness has skyrocketed. Nowadays the worst I get is a little dirt clinging to the celery stalks, or some thickened juices to be rinsed off beans from a can. Nothing to compare with bodily fluids!
Anyway – I got it all cleaned up and then sat back to enjoy my relief at not having to deal with meat any more. I think I’ll be off the bivalves for a good long time now. I do have some good oysters in my freezer, but they’ll just have to stay there for a while. I’m more than ready for a break. And, lucky me, today Superstore had the awesome veggie swiss cheese and portobella burgers in stock, so we’ll be having that for dinner with some fries to accompany. I’m not really feeling like another greasy meal but who can say no to such great burgers?