And then the lunch that made me want to start writing...

Yesterday I ate a big plate of meat for lunch. Barbecued ribs from Flints, to be exact. Not organic, not locally or sustainably produced, not at all in line with anything about the way I say I eat.

And. It. Was. Good. Not just that, but I felt good afterwards, too. I've been recovering from a nasty bout with the zombie flu, and my energy has been looooow. A big plate o' meat seemed like just the ticket.

And I had already been planning to eat some meat: curried goat with my new friend D. I was justifying this because, hey, there's no real goat industry in this country, so the meat is likely produced on a relatively small scale. And, of course, with handy-dandy rule no. 8. I've only eaten goat a few times in my life, but damn is it tasty. And you don't see it around the menu every day. When D. and I were having our first lunch together two weeks ago (I kept it veggie then, but not vegan—we were at the Mexicali Rose, where absolutely nothing at all is vegan; I guess in the last post I forgot rule no. 9, which is: If you've gotta eat, you've gotta eat, and you might as well like it), I mentioned a taste for goat, and she told me about her favorite Caribbean place not too far from my house. Obviously we had to go.

Anyway, the goat place was closed. Apparently it's run by stoners. No surprise they run late. We tried another Caribbean place, but it was closed, too. The sign on the door said they were catering some reggae show in Santa Cruz.

By then I was starving (I skipped breakfast in preparation for the heavy meatiness), and primed for meat. D. was thrilled that Flints was still around and might actually be open. It seemed like fate.

And I ate the ribs and I was happy—even though your very much face-to-face with what meat is when you're eating it right off the bone. There were sinews. That tasted good. Oh, my.

As a pretty extreme example in the long line of things I choose to eat that I quote don't eat anymore unquote, it's makin' me think: Is it chickenshit of me to say I have these rules when I break them so much? How can I balance my own needs with the needs of others (meatpackers, farmworkers, people who live near polluting feedlots, cows) and with my own ethics? Am I just not trying hard enough?