Happy Easter! Or Happy Just Another Day if you don’t celebrate Easter. This year for the first time in my life I observed Lent through self-denial. I gave up meat.
For those who wonder why I eat meat in the first place, I’ve considered the question for over 30 years. My food sourcing experience is not limited to grocery store and restaurant visits. I have participated in killing, butchering, cleaning and cooking meat. I have never been so hungry as when I assisted my grandfather in killing and cleaning a cow. Sure, I’d had a full breakfast but that didn’t matter. The process of killing, skinning and cleaning that beast left the marrow of my bones hungering. It was not my body that craved meat that day, it was my essence. I’ve also participated in making sausage. I do know what goes in and it’s fine by me. My consumption includes offal. It’s all good. The only hesitations I have about meat consumption is the cruelty of modern factory farming techniques and the ecological load of eating so high on the food chain.
Since Ash Wednesday of this year I’ve done without what is normally a staple of my diet. It was interesting.
Easing the process was my vegetarian wife’s support. There was no home front disruption. Certainly I ate better than many who give up meat for Lenten observation. We know how to do veg.
At work, where I take my lunches in the cafeteria, I was presented with a much smaller range of food options. Salads became a staple. On many days all the soups contained meat. The entrée specials had a vegetarian offering perhaps one day a week. Hot food, comfortable hot food, became mostly unavailable. My self imposed restrictions did not include fish. The tuna melt sandwich became a refuge for days when I wanted something warm.
The hardest times were at restaurants. Not that there were not ample vegetarian options. There were always good choices. However there were also great choices for meaty dishes that I desired. It never reached the level of craving, but I did feel some strong desires.
Controlling my desires by applying my wants became the central experience for Lent. The “want” in wishing to see this commitment through persevered over the desire to indulge in familiar flavors. During the forty days I got to observe myself encountering the moments of temptation and desire.
It was interesting.
I’d kill to be able to eat a wilte spinach salad.
One of many reasons that vegetarianism wouldn’t work for me. But perhaps for you, on a longer basis?