Food, to me, is not a meal right in front of me. It's the result of labor over raw resource, logistics of moving that resource, industry to meet demand of consumers, massive, always in need to make more faster. It's a system economically natural, choosing better ways to better the source and improve cultivation.
I'm what a lot of people might refer to as a food snob. In other words I'm someone who tries to keep the meals I eat to contain real pieces. Understand, that if this system is to keep up with demand, specifically the American demand and all our culture incentives in it, food must be made faster, cheaper. There are many ways of doing so, such as feeding cattle a diet of corn, a cheaper and more easily renewable crop that would require physical adjustments to the bodies of cows for them to accommodate it, as well as replacing sugar, a labor intensive and expensive luxury by artificial substances such as aspartame and the famous high fructose corn syrup.
Another thing about the food I eat is none of it is cut off of animals. I'm a proud vegetarian, been one for about 12 years now. I'm not someone who would preach about such things to people when they don't ask, because I believe we are all free to choose. You would find it humorous to learn that I work in a grocery store deli, where I practice abstinence by cutting up meat and preparing it but not eating it.
One of the most challenging things about this dilemma is what to tell costumers when they come up and ask me what I think about the "Pesto Parmesan Ham," or the "Head Cheese". Usually when they ask I have a straight answer.
"I've never had it, but it sells like crazy." I would say, offering them a sample to try it for themselves, avoiding them asking me why I've never tried it. One time someone asked me about the Blazing Buffalo chicken, asking if it was overwhelmingly spicy, when I told them I couldn't say because I don't eat meat.
"You don't eat meat but you cut it?" He asked, grinning. Of course the irony here is a little ridiculous, a tad awkward for me as well, and with my coworkers watching I just told the dude the truth.
"Money talks." I said. And it's true. Before I got this job in the deli, I put applications into countless places needing money bad, so when this one came up it was a blessing, even if it meant selling out my beliefs for cash.
In the time I've worked in the Ol' Boar's Head deli, I've acquired more knowledge about meat then any vegetarian should possess. I know the best temperate to serve a rotisserie chicken to be around 165 degrees because that temperature keeps the bird safe to eat as well as not too over done, I also know one of the best sources of red meat you can eat is roast beef because of its minimal salt content, I know how to operate a deli slicer (Bizerba is best) and a meat grinder, I can skewer chickens faster than anyone I work with, and can scrub baked fat, skin, blood and grease from the rotisserie at the end of the day faster and more thoroughly than my supervisor.
It's strange, how this evil distribution hub of dismembered decorated animal carcasses has become somewhat of a passion of mine. I take great pride where I work (Sunflower Farmers Market), rolling slices of meat in a neat organized manner before I package it for customers, going beyond the to do list and cleaning ceiling tiles and scrubbing behind grills, underneath tables and whatever other job I can spot. I try hard to be an over achiever, showing up fifteen minutes early every day to hopefully only move up in the place but also put me under this umbrella of protection if I were to screw up.
Why would this vegetarian, affiliated with a group of people who would either hate me for what I do or want to blow up my workplace altogether, be in such a position and not be pressured to either quit for the sake of integrity or just "give in" and start eating meat altogether? Usually I just take these questions and hide them somewhere where I won't find them again. The fact is, I enjoy being vegetarian. I know if I really start questioning it I would contract myself, and eventually lose touch with what it means to me. There's a feeling of cleanliness about eating vegetables nuts and beans, and I choose to hang on to this feeling as long as I can. And besides, despite enjoying my job, sometimes it disgusts me, and ultimately it fortifies everything I believe in.
One time the light in our walk in refrigerator was off, and I had to walk into the back to retrieve a flavor a turkey for an anxious customer. In the back is our meat wall, where everything ranging from high priced Italian meats like Prosciutto De Parma to garlic bologna, to hams to chickens, to turkeys, to beef, all wrapped in plastic and sporting fancy labels and the Boar's Head Brand name. I've seen this wall countless times, but with the light off and nothing but my key ring flashlight to illuminate the scene, I saw something different, baleful and ominous. The darkness made this image of meat food products not food products anymore, but these mechanically rendered and adjusted pieces of them, unrecognizable as being once living animals, but now the decorated, cooked, ritually aesthetic shelf products labeled by flavor and expiration date. With the dark hue all around and my light reflecting off the plastic, I grabbed the one boasting "Honey Maple Oven Roasted Breast of Turkey" in gold font, took it up front and asked if she wanted it thick medium or shaved, ignoring the feeling of cold guilt and agonizing cruelty crawling up and down my mind as I sliced it.
The first job I do when I get there is fill the rotisserie. Each box comes with twenty chickens, skin attached, feet removed, innards gone, sometimes the spine is exposed. When you open the box, the chickens are air tight in a large blue plastic bag submerged in what looks like cold watered down pale pink blood. I take each one, one by one, and skewer them on the four foot long rotisserie steak, butt first, until I have five on each steak, forty all together. The first time I did this was incredibly difficult. It was vile and unnatural to me, I felt the cold creep into my body through my gloves as bones cracked while I pushed them into the steak.
I love hard work. I love hard, messy work that leaves me feeling a little messed up at the end. I never would have thought it but this job changed my life in good way, a way that brought me together with the ugliness I protest, and the work that put it here. I've found that integrity isn't always staying grounded in what you believe, but doing what you need to do to live, even if it's very difficult. As someone put it, I'm going to vegetarian hell, that's for sure. But making a living in the furnace of one of the dominant things in this world I find to be evil, I've become in tune to what it means to be alive, that death is natural, that coping is possible, and all the ugliness in this world keeps what I believe in beautiful.
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