OK picture a plate of soft, steaming vegetables. Vegetables that are good for you. Broccoli. Cabbage. Carrots. Toss in a little red bell pepper for color. Now in your mind’s eye place those vegetables on a nice artfully applied hillock of brown rice.
OK now think of a big fat juicy steak that is slightly charred around the edges with lovely grill marks cutting across the freshly cracked pepper studded surface. Keeping that image now add some flaky artisanal sea salt raining down in slow motion. Now imagine taking a beautiful handmade and slightly dangerous steak knife and cutting into the hot meat... warm rose colored juice issues forth and runs into the adjacent crispy, golden brown potatoes that have been lovingly fried in duck fat. You take your fork and slide the chunk of meat around in the juice and then slowly put the wet, hot, slightly crunchy, salty, peppery, fragrant flesh in your mouth and… chew… slowly. Now take a slice of those amber, honey colored potatoes that are crispy on the outside yet soft on the inside. Again you use it sop up some juice and stamp some of the errant salt and pepper into the potato…As you bring it to your lips you smell the juice from the steak, the duck fat and just a hint of pepper. You it eat and take a hearty pull from your wine glass that is filled with a big, round, oaky, hairy chested Rioja sporting a ruby pinky ring and slicked back hair. You are happy. You are content. And for those of you who are capable of such things you may very well have a slight erection .
People, this is what we are up against. If it’s your last meal are you gonna take gray, limp, damp vegetables or a chunk of burnt animal? So what we need to do is find non-meat based chow that meats… sorry… meets the fundamental criteria presented in the above paragraph. Once we do this we can then worry about universal healthcare and social responsibility. So what is it that is so satisfying about meat?
Let’s do a little free association. Meat is: Round. Full. Crunchy. Juicy. Dark. Fragrant. Sexy. Powerful. Fatty. Smokey. Salty. Tasty. Luxurious. Primitive. Burnt. Selfish. Thick. Primordial. Heavy. Slightly evil. Bloody. Erotic. Warm. Dominate. Unenlightened. Wrong. Indulgent. Fucking good.
It is now our job to find non-meat based food that fits this model. Can we? Jeez I hope so or this is going to be one very short lived project. I will now end with a very hopeful thought: dessert is rarely meat based.
