Well, according to a recent Harvard Business Review article, we would be wiser to reconsider the amount of meat products on our grocery list rather than merely looking for how many miles our food may have traveled.

How much more concerned should we be? A lot.

The HBR cites a Carnegie Mellon study that concluded that we’d each do more good for the planet if we ate meat-free just one day a week than we would if we ate exclusively—100 percent!—local foods.

Why? In short, because it generally takes vastly more resources to raise animals than it does to produce plants. For example, The New York Times reports that, calorie for calorie, the production of meat requires 16 times more fossil fuel than vegetables and rice.

Those of us in the sustainable food movement should take heed of the words of people like environmental historian James McWilliams, who notes in his book Just Food, “to be perfectly blunt, if the world continues to eat meat at current rates, there’s simply no way to achieve truly sustainable food production.”

In other words, Carnegie Mellon’s research concludes that most animal farming (and slaughtering) is so environmentally taxing, we’d be better off simply opting for a once-weekly plant-based diet than getting every morsel of our food from the local farmers market. (Of course, eating plant-based foods from that local farmers market may be even better.)

This is one reason WorldWatch Institute reports, “It has become apparent that the human appetite for animal flesh is a driving force behind virtually every major category of environmental damage now threatening the future.”

The good news is that campaigns like Meatless Mondays are gaining popularity throughout the country. As well, it’s often easier to find a vegetarian option than a local option at nearly any restaurant.

Whether it’s to protect the planet, prevent cruelty to animals, or improve our health, eating lower on the food chain is a win-win. And with all the free tips and recipes for reducing our consumption of meat out there, it’s never been easier.

Perhaps it won’t be too long before we see a TIME cover feature beckoning, “Move Over Meat—It’s Plants’ Time in the Sun.”

Food news hound Kim O’Donnel is often ahead of the culinary curve.

In a longtime online gig for The Washington Post, the seasoned journalist began blogging about all things edible and conducting kitchen chats before such venues took off in gastronomical cyber circles.

She started Canning Across America before pickling and preserving D.I.Y.ers turned up in a photo spread in the New York Times Magazine.

And she was one of the first mainstream reporters to cover the meat-free Monday phenomenon.

She began writing about the subject for the Post a couple of years ago in a recipe-focused column that proved the impetus for her new cookbook, The Meat Lover’s Meatless Cookbook: Vegetarian Recipes Carnivores Will Devour (Da Capo Press, $18.95).

The unapologetically omniverous O’Donnel, who thoroughly enjoys roast chicken, pork shoulder, and a juicy burger, earned her chef chops from the Institute of Culinary Education (on a James Beard Foundation scholarship no less). O’Donnel, who has written for Real Simple, The Huffington Post, True/Slant, and Civil Eats, says her book isn’t intended for devout vegetarians.

There are already plenty of classic tomes geared to that group, she notes, though herbivores will likely find dishes that make them happy in her book’s pages.

Rather, she wants to bring confirmed carnivores into the fold with satisfying recipes that won’t earn her the rabbit food rap. Flesh eaters take note: There’s no lentil-nut loaf among the offerings here. No sprouts or faux meat either. We’re talking hearty fare.

Every recipe had to pass the Kim O’Donnel test: This is a gal who includes a photo of herself as a toddler happily going to town on a T-bone on the back of her business card. (Nowadays, she wants to know where meat she eats comes from and how it was raised.)

So she knows her audience. “I want people who can’t imagine going a day without eating meat to give this a try and see if it doesn’t expand their horizons,” says O’Donnel, in an interview last summer at her home in Alki Beach in Seattle, where egrets and seals are frequent visitors.

“I’m not into food rules and I’m not asking people to learn a whole new language or set of skills in the kitchen,” adds the host of Table Talk, a weekly cooking chat on Culinate. “I’m just suggesting that they make an incremental change to diversify their diet and include less meat in the mix.”

O’Donnel is optimistic, despite the fact that recent research reveals that many Americans rarely let a veggie pass their lips. The Centers for Disease Control, for instance, found that less than a third of American adults eat three or more vegetables a day.

Still, she’s hoping that if the steak-loving set come along for the ride, they’ll see, as she did, that there’s a world of flavors in veg-centric cuisine that can take the rut out of any cook’s recipe repertoire.

The guide is arranged a little differently from your typical cookbook. There’s 52 menus, one for each week of the year, organized by season, rather than chapters on different courses. The 95 recipes are, where appropriate, designated gluten-free, vegan, dairy-optional, kid-friendly, and leftover bonus, so you can tailor what you cook to your needs and those of others joining you at the table.

As for many, O’Donnel, 44, decided to try life with less meat for health, personal, and environmental reasons. She’s battled high cholesterol since her teens. Her dad died young from heart disease.

And she was struck by a comment made by Nobel Peace Prize winner and UN climate expert Rajendra Pachauri that one of the most important things you can do to help the planet is not trade in your gas guzzler for a Prius, but go meat-free once a week.

These days, she goes meatless, on average, about three times a week. That means there are a lot more legumes, grains, and produce on her plate now. “I don’t think in terms of looking for a stand-in for meat,” she says. “I’m just looking for a good mix of protein, complex carbs, veg and fruit.”

She’s a big fan of beans of all kinds and sees nothing wrong with eating eggs for supper (a concept whole-heartedly endorsed by this writer). From her cookbook selection she counts Potpie with Cheddar Biscuit Crust and Sweet Potato Black Bean Chili as two meals likely to win over meat lovers in a heart beat.

O’Donnel is in good company on the cut-back-on-meat bandwagon. Launched in 2003, Meatless Monday is an initiative of New York-based nonprofit Healthy Monday, in partnership with the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. The day-off-from-meat campaign is an attempt to help Americans cut their saturated fat intake by 15 percent. (Mondays, at the start of the week, are considered a good day to set intentions.)

Vegetarian cookbook scribes Mollie Katzen and Deborah Madison are among a growing group of chefs who champion using meat as a flavor accent to a meal, if at all. Even hardcore carnivores like restauranteur Mario Batali have embraced Meatless Monday.

But O’Donnel, a recent West Coast transplant looking for more balance in her life,  has a touch of the zen about her. She’s not aggressively trying to convert carnivores.

Going meatless simply makes her feel better, she says, and she thinks other eaters might like to discover that too. Since she made the switch to a more plant-based way of eating O’Donnel pays more attention to what she cooks and turns out more flavorful food that costs less than a meal with meat. Who can argue against that?

Next month, this cookbook author begins a bimonthly column for USA Today called “The Family Kitchen.” It’s a safe bet that O’Donnel will bring meat-free meals, sans heavy-handed sermonizing or dietary dogma, to this middle American audience, simply making her case for cooking vegetarian recipes without sacrificing sustenance, taste, or texture.

Bay Area readers: O’Donnel will appear at 18 Reasons for a Meatless Monday dinner and talk tonight. She’ll also be talking up the merits of an eat-less-meat life at Kitchen Table Talks the following evening. Click here to find out about other upcoming events and appearances.

Originally published on Lettuce Eat Kale

Photo: Myra Kohn

As a long-time regular of Angelica Kitchen restaurant in New York City, I’ve come to consider it a “second kitchen,” a place I feel good about supporting because it shares the values I keep in my own kitchen: High quality ingredients that provide a fair income to farmers who are working to protect the environment–and which provide nutrition without sacrificing any of the flavor–all for the reasonable cost afforded by buying direct.

And I am not alone. Since it opened its door in 1976, Angelica Kitchen has cultivated a loyal following, and their sustainable business model–maintained without serving alcohol (you can BYOB)–is a case study for success outside of the mainstream restaurant industry. Angelica’s is also one of the most popular vegetarian restaurants in New York City, precisely because it attracts a clientele that includes many non-vegetarians. In honor of Vegetarian Awareness Month, I spoke with owner Leslie McEachern–who is being awarded for her long-time advocacy of small, local farms by the Northeast Organic Farming Association this month–about running a restaurant built on relationships.

With over thirty years in New York City, why do you think Angelica Kitchen has been such a success?

We’ve earned the trust of people who are seeking out a plant-based diet. I think people have experienced the satisfaction of eating really fresh organic ingredients and having their body respond well to that, because we’ve really focused on a balanced, nutritional whole foods diet at Angelica. All of the thought that has gone into providing a balanced, whole food meal, especially with the quality of the ingredients from the farmers, I think people just respond well to it sometimes without even knowing why.

Why did Angelica Kitchen decide to be vegan from the outset?

The three guys who started the restaurant were very much into the whole macrobiotic scene. And even though macrobiotic is not vegan, I think they were interested in as clean a diet as possible, and a plant-based diet to them was the way to go.

Why did you decide to maintain Angelica’s as a vegan restaurant?

I had been a vegetarian for over 10 years at that time, and actually, I’d been living out of the woods in North Carolina for six years, out of a little hut with no electricity, no plumbing or anything. I’d been living on a very straight-forward plant-based diet, just living very close to the land. Then I moved to New York all of a sudden because I fell in love with a guy–the guy who owned Angelica’s. So it never even occurred to me to shift away from what was going on because philosophically I was already aligned, not only with seeking out the farmers which was happening when I got involved, but also because I felt it was an intelligent approach to having a restaurant in that neighborhood.

Who do you think Angelica Kitchen’s audience is?

I don’t try to appeal to anyone in specific. We don’t advertise, we’ve always been word-of-mouth. Back in the early 1980s, it was very much the neighborhood coming to the restaurant. When I built the restaurant on 12th Street, where we opened in 1988, there was a lot of education going on about “you are what you eat.” Now, people come from all over the world because there is such an interest in eating clean. And that has continued to grow. We don’t approach or make our menu to meet a certain need. We have our passion, which is really about whole foods, about supporting the local farmers–we support 24 different artisans and farmers year-round–and using their products to show off the plant-based menu.

Do you think there is more awareness now about food than there was when Angelica Kitchen opened in the 1970s?

There is a tremendous amount of awareness. I see people really making intelligent choices now about what they’re putting into their bodies. That’s a broad statement and I’m certainly not including all of western culture. Just the numbers of people that are coming into Angelica’s Kitchen, the number of people who are going to farmers’ markets, the number of books that are available about eating clean and eating well. Like my friend Marion Nestle, she’s written these great books, like Food Politics, What to Eat, and Safe Food–Marion has sold so many books. And I just don’t know that that would have been possible 20 years ago.

What made you decide to focus on organic food when you first got involved with Angelica’s?

My soul responds to nature. When I started reading Wendell Berry in the early 1970s, I found a voice for that. And once I’d found that voice, not only through his philosophical writings, his agricultural writings, his poetry and his novels, I was very inspired. Frank, the owner at the time [I got involved], had already been ordering from local, organic growers. I had always been in the natural foods business, and I had worked with a lot of organic ingredients before, and I knew where my heart stood on that matter. So I had the opportunity to get on my soapbox through my actions once I got involved with Angelica’s and say that this is what I feel is the best way to feed people. And so I continued to network to find the ingredients from local growers–organic, diversified, small, independent family farms.

Are there farmers that you’ve kept ties with since the beginning, that you’ve worked with for the past two decades?

Definitely. There are farmers who didn’t even have children then, whose children are now graduated from college. It’s very rewarding having long-term relationships with Guy Jones at Blooming Hill Farm, Mark Denau from Martin Dell Farm, and Lou Harris Farm up in the Finger Lakes. Getting to see the farmers when they bring their produce in on deliveries is a terrific bonus as far as doing this kind of business. In fact, those relationships are the very thing that keeps me inspired to keep going.

What is the most popular dish at the restaurant?

Through the years its definitely been the Dragon Bowl [steamed vegetables, sea vegetables, beans, rice and tofu with a choice of dressing], I think because we’re so close to NYU and its such a complete meal, and lots of times people eat half of it and take the other half home. And [the Wee Dragon] is under $10, and its a well-balanced meal when you are hungry.

You have been asked over the years to expand the restaurant to other locations–why have you said no?

Wendell Berry talks about having a sense of place. In a certain way I would love to see more people doing whole foods, fresh from farms. But the way I’m made up personally, I don’t want another restaurant. It’s really a lot of work to do it well. One of the problems that I came across was that most people who I’ve had this kind of conversation with were concerned only about the bottom line. You can’t do a restaurant like Angelica Kitchen if you are concerned just about the bottom line. Because you’re going to start cutting corners, you’re going to start paying staff less. We deliberately keep our prices low, and this is a point of contingence with people who would be interested in opening more Angelica Kitchens. Its a philosophical conflict for me to undo what I’ve tried to put out there as an example of what is possible to be done: a whole foods restaurant, without alcohol, that is serving the farmer, that is serving the public.

You’ve called yourself a “reluctant restaurateur.” What do you mean?

(Laughs) I think the best way that everyone could eat is to be at home and cook and eat with your friends and family. Ideally–again, how ideal is this world?–there wouldn’t be a need for a restaurant.

Below is a recipe from The Angelica Home Kitchen cookbook, which is available at the restaurant or through the Angelica Kitchen Web site. This stew is just right for the fall, features root vegetables and the fundamental ingredients of Japanese cuisine such as kombu, shoyu, ginger and rice wine (mirin). Enjoy!

Oden (Asian root vegetable stew)

2 teaspoons olive oil
2 cups diced onions
6 cups water
1 cup burdock, scrubbed and cut into 1-inch pieces
1 cups carrots, scrubbed and cut into 1-inch pieces
1 cup daikon, scrubbed and cut into 1-inch pieces
1 cup rutabagas, scrubbed and cut into 1-inch pieces
1 cup parsnips, scrubbed and cut into 1-inch pieces
4 to 6dry shiitake mushrooms
1 (3-inch) piece dried kombu
5 slices ginger, each the size of a quarter
1/2 cup shoyu or tamari
2 tablespoons mirin
1/4 cup kuzu
1 tablespoon toasted sesame oil
2 tablespoons sliced scallions for garnish

In a heavy saucepan, sauté the onions and burdock in the olive oil over medium heat for 10 minutes. Add six cups of water and bring to a boil over high heat. Add the carrots, daikon, rutabagas, parsnips, shiitake mushrooms, kombu, ginger, mirin and tamari. Lower the flame and simmer covered for 30 to 40 minutes or until the vegetables are tender. Remove ginger and discard. Remove kombu and shiitake mushrooms, slice into bite-size pieces, and return to the pot. Dissolve the kuzu in 1/4 cup cold water; stir into the stew and simmer for 1 or 2 minutes longer. stir in the sesame oil. NOTE: You should never cook with toasted sesame oil because high heat will release free radicals in the oil, making it toxic. Use toasted sesame oil as a last-minute addition; treat like a flavor enhancer such as salt or vinager. Serve with noodles or rice, accompanied by baked, marinated tofu, kimchee, and scallion garnish.

Photo: jwrkc via Flickr

I blame Bakesale Betty.  If the blue-haired Aussie-American Alison hadn’t lured me into her store with lamingtons and sticky date pudding I would never have succumbed to the charms of her legendary fried chicken sandwiches, which cause perfectly sane people to line up on Telegraph Avenue in North Oakland. For a sandwich. I kid you not.

It also doesn’t help that Bakesale Betty is on my way home from my editing gig and I’m often ravenous as I drive by, doing a quick scan to see if there’s 1. a line snaking down the street or 2. any parking.

If the parking gods and queue karma are on my side, I’m in and out with one of her sandwiches before you can say hello hypocrite.

Let me explain. I’ve been a vegetarian since I was 17, when I gave up meat in what my mum, a good cook, viewed as just another one of my rebellious teenage acts. Despite growing up in a meat-loving land, where the backyard barbie rules, I became a greens and legumes kinda gal.

For more than a quarter of a century, I lived the veg life. To be precise, I guess I’m technically a pescatarian, as I sometimes eat seafood. Especially in my hometown, Sydney, because — news flash — fabo fish to be had Down Under peeps.

So how to explain the recent chicken sandwich obsession? What can I say? I think I’m having a middle-aged meat crisis. Some 20 years ago I introduced the man who would become the father of my child to the virtues of a vegetarian diet. Hell, I married him at Greens. My 11-year-old kid has never, ever eaten an ounce of animal flesh.  (His choice. I’m no zealot.)  My blog is called Lettuce Eat Kale. I’ve watched Food, Inc. I frequent farmers’ markets. You get the idea.

I should be a poster girl for a pro-produce life.

And yet…a couple of years ago around a certain time in my cycle I began craving protein. No worries, fish usually did the trick. Then I started to slip a bit when sharing food at ethnic restaurants around town. Chicken raised with love, care, good feed, and bucolic views began to find its way into my mouth. What the heck was happening?

I wasn’t sure, but I suspected hormones played a role. I also knew I wasn’t dealing with this particular omnivore’s dilemma on my own.  My friend Connie was a vegetarian — until she got pregnant with her first kid 16 years ago. Then it was off to the steak house for her and she’s never looked back.  My dance instructor, Amara Tabor-Smith, eschewed animal protein for decades — she didn’t like the texture — and is now tentatively getting reacquainted with meat.

I’d always assumed, along with many others I suspect, that vegetarian cookbook superstars Deborah Madison and Mollie Katzen didn’t eat meat. Not so, I discovered in the past year during chats with both chefs. Mollie describes herself as a “meat nibbler,” and Deborah’s not opposed to the occasional piece of grass-fed, local beef.

Their most recent books, Get Cooking by Mollie, and What We Eat When We Eat Alone by Deborah, include meat recipes. Still, both women favor a diet where greens, grains, and legumes dominate the dinner plate.  Mollie supports the Meatless Monday campaign and both believe most meat eaters would do well to eat less animal and more plant foods.

Eating meat after years — or even a lifetime — of a solely plant-based diet seems to be something of a trend. For people who chose vegetarianism for ethical or environmental reasons, sourcing meat sustainably is now often a viable alternative to factory-farmed animals, and so some have decided to include it sparingly in their diet.

(Bucking this seemingly female shift, is wonder boy writer Jonathan Safran Foer, who dabbled with vegetarianism for years but fully committed after he became a pet owner. He will probably convert masses to the cause with his description of chicken fecal soup and other horrors of industrial animal slaughter in his recent book, Eating Animals.)

In this confusing time, I feel I’ve found a kindred spirit in Tara Austen Weaver, the warm and witty writer who blogs about meat and many other food matters at Tea & Cookies.  I can so relate to the mental tug-of-war that underlies her recent book The Butcher and the Vegetarian: One Woman’s Romp through a World of Men, Meat, and Moral Crisis.  Tara didn’t have a choice in her vegetarian childhood — she was raised that way by a Northern California hippie mama.

Several years ago, she started exploring eating meat for health reasons.  Her descriptions of buying, prepping, and cooking meat resonate with me because I haven’t actually ever gone and purchased a chicken or, um, chicken bits and made dinner. That notion makes me feel nauseous, to be honest. I don’t even like looking at raw meat.

I know, I know, I’m the worst kind of turncoat. I leave the house to get a bit of hot flesh on the side. When my son stopped by home unexpectedly the other afternoon, I found myself hiding aforementioned cluck, cluck sandwich before opening the door. Clearly, I have some conflicted feelings about my dietary changes.

So what to call myself: A lapsed vegetarian?  A vegetarian who cheats?

I thank the funny Adair Seldon of Lentil Breakdown for introducing me to the term flexitarian, which seems to fit for now, loathe as I am to saddle myself or anyone else with a label.

For the record, I seem to have no desire to move on to “harder” meats, like beef, pork, or lamb.  (An aside: Why isn’t it cow, pig, and sheep? I suspect it’s a way for many of us to remain in denial about where meat actually comes from.)

And I’ve never had any interest in eating creatures I see on hiking trails such as ducks, rabbits, quail, deer, elk, and the like. But since chicken is becoming a somewhat regular fix (once or twice a month), I’ve learned never to say never.

My vegetarianism stemmed in part, from my inability to kill an animal, hence my healthy respect for folks like Novella Carpenter, who don’t flinch at taking responsibility for ending the life of an animal they’ve raised for food. I feel cowardly in the carnivore arena by comparison.

Penning this post has probably blown my chances of ever writing for Vegetarian Times or VegNews (though I do think this topic is one such mags would do well to cover.)

But you won’t find meat recipes on my blog, although I’m sure some veggies will unsubscribe in disgust at my wishy-washy vegetarianism.

That would be a shame. Because I am still the girl who obsesses about eating greens. Nothing makes me happier than a meal packed with produce. I am, to borrow a term Mollie Katzen used in a recent story on Civil Eats, very much a pro-vegetable person, a vegetabilist.

And I view healthy eating in much the same way I see sexuality.  In my mind, most humans are basically bisexual, it just depends where on the spectrum you fall in terms of how you define your sexual orientation.

Similarly, we’re probably all on an omnivore continuum, with some of us falling firmly on the carnivorous end and others of us way down on the other end of the line very much in vegetarian or even vegan territory.

In the end, come dinner time, it’s a personal choice what we put on our plate and the justifications we make with ourselves and our sometimes contradictory culinary choices are our own to live with as we figure out our place on the food chain and what our bodies need to stay well.

I welcome your thoughts below.

Originally published on Lettuce Eat Kale

I grew up in Kansas – the land of corn-feed beef, boneless, skinless chicken breast, and pork: the other white meat. I never gave much thought to meat except whether it was low in fat and calories, so when I told my family I was becoming a vegetarian, I was met with blank stares and a heated disagreement surrounding my anemia (with the lack of red meat, the family was concerned about my iron levels). My shift towards vegetarianism began slowly with Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation followed by Peter Singer’s The Ethics of Eating Meat, Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma and eventually, I found myself reading Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson’s The Face On Your Plate. For three years, I was vigilant about my food, checking the labels of grocery store purchases and grilling restaurant servers about the ingredients in each dish. It took me nearly 6 months to go completely meatless and only one In-and-Out cheeseburger, three years later, to fall off the proverbial wagon. What happened? How did I devote such a significant amount of my life vegetarianism only to be tempted by a cheeseburger?

To be perfectly honest, part of me just missed eating meat. There were so many items on restaurant menus to taste and I was limited by my choice to abstain from meat. I knew I didn’t want to support Tyson, Smithfield and/or National Cattlemen Beef Association, but I just wanted to eat a cheeseburger again. I started to seek out small ranchers who raised animals with respect of the animal, the land and their customers. My personal food journey lead me to Bay Area ranchers such as Marin Sun Farms, Prather Ranch, Soul Food Farm and eventually, Fatted Calf, an artisanal charcuterie shop in downtown Napa.

Two months ago, I found myself in a similar position as many Americans: my department at work down-sized and I was laid off. It was nearly impossible to find a job during the holidays, so I started to consider other ways to fill my time until the job market picked up.  Since I live in Napa, I decided to ask the owner of Fatted Calf for a kitchen stage (French term for internship used by the food industry). I had always wanted experience in a professional kitchen and I also felt that if I was going to eat meat, I should be able to see the entire process. Fatted Calf’s husband-wife team, Taylor Boetticher and Toponia Miller, support local farmers, use organic and hormone-free meats and organic produce, so for me, it was a perfect place to learn. I have no real kitchen experience, but I have been a home chef for years and I figured it was impossible that he would let me do any actual work. Maybe just some chopping or slicing: simple kitchen tasks. More than anything, I thought I would be learning from the sidelines. I was wrong.

In less than an hour on my first day, I found myself wrist-deep in a gallon of pig’s blood. We were making boudin noir, blood sausage, and it was my job to mix the spices, meat and blood. I looked down and I saw my forearms splattered with pig’s blood. It was then that I questioned my interest in learning the in’s and out’s of an artisanal charcuterie shop; just 14 months before, I was a strict vegetarian, and now I had my hands in pig’s blood.

In the Fatted Calf kitchen, no piece of the animal goes to waste. Organs are used for pâtés and sausage, chicken fat is turned into schmaltz (used for frying or spread on bread), duck fat is used for confits and rillette; and bones are roasted and later used for stock. Over the last three weeks, I have broken down multiple ducks, several chickens, 4 pork bellies, 20 picnic hams; I’ve chopped duck livers and gizzards, the heads and feet from chickens and trussed so many rib chops my fingers are starting to lose skin. I worked hard in the kitchen as local ranchers dropped off their chickens, pigs and eggs; and a few foragers delivered large, yellow wild chanterelles.

The thing I find the most incredible from my experience is that untrained migrant workers do this every day in factory farms all over the country. They have to move quickly through the animals because quantity trumps quality but butchering an animal is hard work that requires skill. For every duck I broke down into breasts, legs and thighs, the guy next to me was onto his third duck. Over time, I know I would be at the same speed as him, but until then, I had to take my time to prevent chopping off a finger or hurting the person next to me. And often times, these guys are working with cows and pigs – significantly tougher animals to break down in a short amount of time. Before Fatted Calf, I had never seen a chicken with its head or feet. I had no idea how much work goes into the meat on our dinner table.

I have learned more about food, cooking and meat in three weeks than in the last 27 years of my life. It has been an incredible experience which has allowed me to get up close and personal with my food. However, eating meat will be a special occasion for me. I believe that we eat too much meat as a society and it encourages companies to speed up the production line to get meat quicker to the plate of each American. Animals become a source of fuel rather than a living, breathing creature. Factory farm workers become machines instead of humans. And the art of butchering becomes a lost skill. Now every time I eat meat, I will appreciate all the work that has gone into my food.

There are things we’ve been doing for almost all of human history almost everywhere that we don’t want to do now…we kept other humans as slaves and we treated women as second class citizens, and we don’t do it anymore. We overcame it, and when we look back at those things that we did, we look back with shame… and I think the farming system we have now… the dominant kind of farming system, the kind that produces 99% of the animals we eat, is something that we are going to look back on with shame.

He got some other factoids out to the masses, too, like that 50 billion animals are being raised for meat in the world every year, and that as China increases its meat-eating, that number could double. He added that 99% of these animals are raised in factory-farmed conditions. Though Foer is a vegetarian, he said he didn’t think that absolutes were a productive way to produce change.

Foer’s book has been the focus of a lot of media attention for his in depth research and for the ethical questions it raises about the way we treat the animals we raise for meat. Two weeks ago he was on the television program Ellen (Ellen DeGeneres is also a famous vegetarian), and ended up starting a debate on the New York Times Green Inc. blog after he linked H1N1 to concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) — the possibility of which the mainstream media has for the most part ignored.

Vegetarianism has even made a foray onto the op-ed pages of the New York Times of late. A couple weeks back, Nicolette Hahn Niman, a vegetarian, environmental lawyer, and rancher, penned an op-ed warning the food movement that condemning meat-eating could be overly simplistic, taking the view that asking people to decrease meat consumption would not be as effective as asking them to buy ethically raised meat. She promptly drew criticism at Treehugger and The Atlantic (to which she responded with a rebuttal). Another op-ed contributor this past Sunday in the Times focused in specifically on the politics of veganism. It seems this discussion, taken into such public forums, shows that the conversation around plant-based diets, and the ethics of eating meat — in an era when great trespasses in animal welfare are occuring — is coming into its own.

“No one will come,” he said.

I knew he was right. No one wants a turkey-less Thanksgiving. I resigned myself to a meal at someone else’s house, cringing at the sight of a gravy-dripping bird proudly displayed in the center of a dining room table.

It was either that or dinner for three, which my husband, daughter and I did one year.

This year there’s a twist in the family drama. Various dysfunctions among siblings, parents and even a friend prevent others from hosting. My dining room will be christened for Thanksgiving. What I’m most grateful for is the chance to gather nearly a dozen people for a meat-less harvest meal.

I stopped eating meat 30 years ago, the day I arrived at college. The decision was not borne of some great moral struggle, though I’ve always had a deep, abiding love for animals. I eat cheese and eggs. I never saw vegetarianism as a movement or something to broadcast, much less proselytize about.

Now I do.

Now I know far too much to hope only my husband (a vegetarian since we got together a decade ago) and my seven-year-old daughter will follow my lead. Now I hope to convince as many humans as I can to think about the connection between what they eat and how it was raised. I want to do whatever I’m able to connect the dots between E-coli and factory farming. I’m urging everyone I come in contact with to watch the documentary “Food Inc,” even though I spent a good portion of it crouching behind the seat, cupping my ears.

Food Inc. showed me I had work to do. I hadn’t made the connection that cheese I’d been buying at stores like Whole Foods might be made with milk from factory-farm cows. That next Thursday, I found a local cheese artisan, Shepherd Valley of New Jersey, at my town’s farm market. During the weekend, my family visited this amazing sheep farm that is responsible for the most delicious, grass-fed cheese. The butter I bought at their farm store showed me I had no idea what real butter tastes like.

I read egg cartons as carefully as I read bank statements. I know free-range and cage-free and all that marketing hullabaloo does not insure laying hens are living a humane existence. I try my best. Sometimes the twee farmy name on the cartoon makes me reach for a particular brand. Until I stop procrastinating and raise chickens (which I’ve been swearing to do since I moved to a big piece of land in suburbia) I will not be satisfied that I’m eating ethically-grown eggs.

We live with so many disconnects. So much about how we live and what we’re exposed to makes us feel powerless. Eating is an exception. Eating is the great equalizer. I can be conscious about every food I choose or reject. With every trip to the health food store or farm market or the farm out yonder I can teach my daughter she never ever has to set foot in an A&P. Or more importantly, what she eats has a story. And every story has something to do with dirt or a tree or an animal. And she has a place in this cycle of life.

I’m already anticipating a few wise cracks over the dinner table on Thanksgiving. Just for sport, you know. I could launch into a lecture on how turkeys have been so genetically modified that they are incapable of natural reproduction. Or I can cook up a harvest feast of my husband’s home-made breads, creamy potato leek soup, sweet potato fries, fresh salads and other vegetables dishes that will leave everyone just as stuffed and overfed as they would otherwise be.

If I’m really lucky, right before we gather around the table before dusk, someone will notice the sound of crunching leaves outside the window. The kids will run over first and squeal with delight at the brood of wild turkeys pecking at the lawn. The rest of us will not be able to resist watching these iridescent feathery creatures pursuing subsistence.

I love these birds. They are always a great source of pleasure and humor. But on Thanksgiving, I will raise my glass to them and whisper “lucky you.”

I ate meat for the first time in over twenty years recently.  The moment presented itself after a culmination of many things, primarily an ever-increasing personal momentum within the world of food.  Writing a food column, owning a cookie company, and working for Slow Food Nation kept bringing me face to face with a myriad of dining experiences.  How could I refuse to just take a taste?  To enter, finally, over the threshold of a zone that can still uphold craft, integrity, responsibility, and culture.

At age seven, after a visit to McDonalds with my dad, I finally made the connection that the Big Mac I had just consumed was one in the same as the friendly cows we passed by in the fields on our drive home.  My heart strained and I simply decided I didn’t want to eat things that were killed for human consumption.  Twenty something years later, I am still a strong advocate for animal rights.  I shudder at the horrors of industrialized factory farming and the environmental, health, and economic injustice linked to our current food system.  But I also support the ways in which people are re-instating sustainable methods of meat production, truly choosing to connect to each and every food choice they make and providing their local communities the option to empower their daily eating habits as well.  In addition, various health practitioners over the years repeatedly suggested that a big dose of meat-based nutrients was exactly what I needed for my specific symptoms.  I’ve heard a well respected homeopath exclaim that one of her longtime vegan patients “needs to eat a @$%$@ steak, for god sake!”  For too long I may have kept the door locked tight for the wrong reasons, or simply because it is so easy not to try the key once I became used to a single way of being.

The meal was a press luncheon at the Friuli Venezia corner of Salone del Gusto on October 25, 2008.  Regions of Italy and the differences between them are as varied and nuanced as the designs on the fabrics next door at the Terra Madre convention.  I was driven to sign up for as many opportunities to sample them as possible in the short four days in Torino, verging on the brink of oversaturation and anxiety at the sheer volume of products.  The trade show aspect of Salone was honestly very surprising, as I innocently expected to find humble, small rows of farmers and producers in their ramshackle booths, selling products with scarce labeling and maximum pride.  Instead were four gigantic pavilions jam packed with crowds and discarded sampling spoons and the constant commercial pulse and push to sell, sell, sell.

The adventure began in a rare calm pocket within the craziness of Pavilion #2, where friend and Chef Gabriel Cole has met me to partake in “Buffet from Trieste“, an offering of traditional products presented by the Friuli Venezia Giulia Regional Authority.  The first course, paired with a lovely dry Malvasia, was set down in front of me and I knew right away that this lunch menu would not present any kind of typical vegetarian adaptability strategies I have come to slip into so instantly.  On my plate sat one thin, pink flap of pork, slightly grilled and drizzled with olive oil.  A sparse grating of fresh horseradish was the sole veggie option.  I glanced at Gabe’s questioning look…”Is she going to do it?” and “How the hell are you getting out of this one?” and simply sliced off a corner and jumped on in.

Tender, savory, umami balance and simplicity in one bite…it was delicious.  I forged ahead, knowing without having to ask that at this ground zero of Slow Food my decision had ethical beginnings in some Italian pasture.  Moving on to a saucy gnocchi with pork ragu and the main course, “Bolito Mista”, a final hilarious slap in the face of someone calling herself a vegetarian.  Four parts of the pig, arriving in the form of sausage, tongue, smoked ham and one more item that was beyond recognition to my virgin eyes.  Again, the vegetable sides consisted of three piles of condiments:  mustard, horseradish, and pesto.  A bit too rough of a carnivorous new beginning, I took a couple of bites of the spicy sausage and slathered the pesto on my roll, feeling like I had spent enough time for one day at the devil’s gate.

Finishing up with an apple strudel on vanilla cream with “ossi dei morti” (meaning “bones of the dead”, the Southern Italian symbol for day of the dead in November) cookies was a perfectly apt ending.  I took an inner nod to the part of me shedding away, letting the dusty, habitual ideologies drift like leaves from my core, and waved goodbye as I munched the sweet rosewater pastry that signifies recognition to all creatures that have come and gone before.