A Note on Being a Carnivore

You know how I always cushion the more difficult of my goals with saying something along the lines of "...but I have no willpower, so whatever..."?  It comes up a lot -- in budgeting, exercising, looking like a professional at work rather than a dumpy college kid (but those few extra minutes of sleep are priceless I tell you!).  I don't know why I say I have no willpower because it's almost a complete lie.  In fact, if nothing else I'm more often accused of being stubborn to the point of dumb when my mind is made up on something.

So I guess I'm just lazy.  I'm a lazy, lazy girl.

This is never more clear to me than when I stop and think about my eating habits and, more specifically, my habit of eating meat.  Here is my dilemma: I am one of the biggest carnivores I know (I seriously love meat)...and I wish I were a vegetarian.  I don't really have any health-related problems with eating animals aside from the regular, run of the mill, we-should-all-eat-less-red-meat-because-our-bodies-have-a-hard-time-digesting-that-crap drama everyone's heard over and over again.  But I do have some serious animal-rights related issues with eating meat.

I'm a huge animal rights fanatic.  Did I ever mention that before?  Well, I am.  I mean, I log on to the PETA website regularly (though I will say their tactics are often way passed too extreme for me), I don't allow myself to enter animal shelters unless 1) I can actually feasibly adopt 15-100 animals that day, or 2) I want to find myself sobbing in bed for the rest of the day, and the only regular charitable donations I make are to wild life conservation groups.

And yet here I am, chomping away.  It makes me feel terrible.

So why do I keep eating meat?  Before you judge, just hear me out for a second.  As lame as it may sound -- and believe me, I'm well aware -- eating meat is sort of intertwined with my culture.  Being from Hawaii, and being Native Hawaiian on top of that, hunting and fishing kind of come with the territory.  Seriously, my family can actually be broken into 2 categories: the hunters and the fishers (though both factions usually dabble in the other).  I grew up camping out in cabins while my cousins and uncles went out hunting for pigs (and my grandfather is the one who taught them all to hunt).  I was always the kid my dad took with him when he went throw-netting or 'opihi picking.  I've seen my brother-in-law clean more pig carcasses in our driveway than I can even tell you.  If you open up our deep freezer chest at any given time, you'll probably find either some tuna my uncles caught and brought over for my grandparents, or the meat of the pig my brother-in-law caught the day before.  I collected bones as a child, for crying out loud!

So while my family and most people I know eat everything they hunt (to not do so would be incredibly disrespectful to the animal), that still makes us a hunting, fishing, meat-eating kind of people.

So I guess that's how I'll justify being a carnivore until I can finally muster up the willpower and courage (because telling my family I no longer eat meat would be a scary thing) to stop.  I'm also not expanding the list of animals I eat, and actually still only eat those that I've eaten since childhood (so no duck, goat, veal, venison, buffalo, lobster, crab, shrimp, etc. etc.).  And I don't eat shark -- which, living with Nate, who's half Asian, is fun -- but that's because my Hawaiian family believe the shark to be our family's guardian spirit (our 'aumakua), and that would just be wrong.

In case you're wondering where this all came from, last night I caught an episode of the new Travel Channel show "The Wild Within" which follows this dude around as he hunts, cooks, and sort of explains his philosophies about hunting animals for food or (if you're a jackass) sport.  In case you're really interested, he'll be going pig hunting in Hawaii during next weekend's episode.

the m/k project

like most women i know, i loved the movie "julie & julia".  not only is amy adams one of my favorite famous people, but meryl streep and stanley tucci are a couple of the best actors of our era.  meryl streep in particular is just...timeless.  the movie was extremely well made and, though i haven't read the book its based off of yet, i don't feel like a lot of short cuts were taken in the storyline.  from costuming to location to food imagery to script, i loved it all.

so it's no surprise really that when N. and his best friend asked that the lovely M. and i cook them dinner for a change this weekend, there really wasn't a question: we were going to go as julia child-esque as possible.

and so "the M./K. project" was born.

on the menu: tournedos sautes au poivre et champignons, petits choux au fromage, and reine de saba.  or, in plain english, filet mignon with a mushroom sauce, cheese puffs, and chocolate almond cake with chocolate butter icing.  we also served an antipasti platter and roasted vegetables.  and lots and lots of wine.  like, buckets of it.

so first of all, we started the evening off with a simple store-bought antipasti platter (salami, prosciutto, bread, havarti, brie, and something like a chorizo tapenade that, along with some guacamole, was provided by the boys), and the cheese puffs.  these cheese puffs are super simple to make and a complete crowd pleaser, unless you're me and soon figure out that you don't actually like cheese puffs.  but with the help of a kitchenaid mixer and about 20lbs of butter (it is julia, after all), they're a quick starter that impressed our guests when they realized we made them.  (tip: they're really good with the chorizo tapenade)

the roasted veggies are sort of self-explanatory, and even someone with me and M.'s limited kitchen abilities can make them.  we chose carrots, parsnips, potatoes and onions, drizzled them with olive oil, salt, pepper and garlic powder, and just roasted until soft.  because we desperately needed a dish that wouldn't clog our arteries with lard.

also, and i don't know if i made it clear, but rockefeller was not bank rolling this shindig so those filet mignon's the tournedos recipe called for quickly became the much more affordable top sirloin.  unfortunately, as we later learned, there is actually a damn good reason that filet mignon is about a thousand times more expensive than our rather economic choice: because, apparently, economy = tough.  word to the wise my friends, unless you're planning on marinating those sirloins for hours (possibly days) on end, be prepared to work those jaw muscles a little more than usual.  a good rule of thumb to keep in mind when staring blankly into your grocer's meat counter is that price really does matter, and the buttery-ness of the meat is directly proportional to the price.

tough meat aside, the main dish wasn't that bad.  the steaks are covered in crushed peppercorns which made them sort of impossible for me to eat (i'm very sensitive to heat/spice -- though this near-disaster turned out okay when the boys showed up with a nice, fat piece of rib eye to grill!), but the mushroom sauce is to die for.  it requires quite a bit (and by bit i mean almost a stick) of butter and cream, and a huge ball of fire that erupts from the sauce pan once you pour in your brandy and set a match to it, but that just makes it all the more yummy.  careful though: we were quite a few bottles of wine into our evening and several hairs got singed in the process of burning off the alcohol.

speaking of alcohol, if it wasn't obvious from all of my previous references, drinking during the preparation of this meal is highly encouraged.  it makes it all the more fun!

and now for the crowing glory: the much-anticipated chocolate and almond cake.  ever since i saw that scene in "julie/julia" where julie and her husband are stuffing their faces with it, i wanted to make it and do the same.  while i'm used to the simpler, let-me-pour-this-cake-mix-out-of-the-box-add-water-eggs-and-oil-mix-and-put-in-the-over recipes, this recipe wasn't that hard.  the melted chocolate is really the part that sort of freaked me out at the beginning because well, who actually melts chocolate over a double boiler?  all i can say is that those years of watching the food network finally paid off when i knew what a double boiler was without googling it, and i knew how to fold in whipped egg whites with relative superiority.

the cake, my friends, was awesome.

in the end, M. and i only needed a little bit of help from our more kitchen-acquainted friends and overall we feel pretty proud of ourselves.  what i've learned about cooking in general is that it takes some time before you're comfortable enough to change recipes on the fly to suit your taste, but it's really something to look forward too.  what i've learned about french cooking though, is that no matter how that movie makes it seem, it is not easy.  but i'm up for practicing.

until then, bon appetit!