Monday 17 February 2014

Chickpeas and Tofu

Just before the new year I decided to become a vegetarian. Since this is very new I have no moral ground (or interest) to preach on the subject, I will just say that this is motivated by my desire to stop participating in the killing of animals. It's also an attempt to act-out on a moral belief even though it entirely contradicts my deeply engrained eating habits.

I come from a Jewish-Lithuanian family were food seems to be made out of only two ingredients - potatoes and pork. There are dishes like ground potatoes filled with pork (Zepelins), or pork intestine filled with mashed potatoes (Vedarai). As Jews we were prohibited to eat pork, but as soviets we were prohibited to be practicing Jews, so eat pork we did. Lithuania's specialty is smoked pork. It can be a type of a salami (Skilandis), ham, bacon or even just smoked pork fat (Salla).

When we immigrated to Israel, where it was finally permitted to practice Judaism, it was already too late to stop eating pork (or start practicing anything religious, for that matter). But pork wasn't easily available in Israel in the 70s. In our neighborhood the solution was Uncle Leo. He operated a mobile pork supply business, delivering pork products to neighborhoods like mine - densely populated by pork-craving immigrants from the eastern block. Every Thursday night me and my mom would walk to the end of the block where Uncle Leo's beat-up Ford Transit van was already parked. At the back of the van several hundred sausages were hanging on hooks. The predominant language in the line-up was Russian, with Romanian, Hungarian and Polish also heard. Not a word of Hebrew though.  Other than sausages Uncle Leo used to sell liquor filled chocolates, just to help solidify my conditioning. When we got back home me and my mom used to tear off a chunk of polish sausage and eat eat it with some dark and heavy bread and raw onion.  

When I came to Vancouver I quickly identified the best places to buy smoked pork - the huge deli section at Santa Barbara market and the smoked pork Mecca - J N Z Smoked Meats. Since both are on Commercial Drive we moved into that neighborhood. J N Z is a stationary replica of Uncle Leo's van - hundreds of sausages are hanging above, the customers only speak some Eastern European language and they even have chocolates from Poland. Buying a Hungarian farmer's sausage and coupling it with fresh Rye bread from Strawberry's bakery quickly became a weekly ritual. I almost never made it home with all the meat I bought, some had to be consumed on the way.

All this to suggest that lasting vegetarianism doesn't necessarily have the highest odds in my case, after all, what's a moral conviction compared to decades (and perhaps generations) of conditioning.

It's been just 8 weeks so far and I'm doing fine. It would have been wonderful to write that it's been enjoyable - a discovery! To say that I feel lighter and healthier, that Tofu is surprisingly flavourful when done right and that I'm excited about cooking chickpeas twice a week, but I'm not a liar. It's not that I miss the meat so much, and I've always eaten lots of fruit and vegetables, it's just that I realized a couple of things that should have been apparent-
1. I've lost the joy of cooking - one of my main hobbies (I may still find it).
2. Eating out isn't fun anymore.

Both facts are a bit of a blow to my short-term quality of life, and the benefits are as abstract as can be.  Perhaps I should point out to myself that not eating out has much needed financial benefits and that cooking less will free up time for more physical activity and eventual health, but as a pork-adict in withdrawal these thoughts bring no relief.


      



4 comments:

  1. Congrats, Rafke! for both the blog and for becoming a vegetarian. and thank you on behalf of Miss Piggy :-) oink

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  2. Well Rafulke, I DO remember my amazement when you were eating your apple leaving only the little stem attached to it. And also having the same effect on me - when I saw you eating the raw union the same way you were eating your apple....

    So apparently you always had it in you - you were just concealing it all these years.
    good luck :)

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  3. Hi Rafi- pork-addict- in- withdrawal,
    You brought up old and forgotten memories of my Polish sausage-loving heritage. They are certainly not as rich as yours…
    I loved your Blog. Congratulations! And, of course, you made the right decision. There are so many good reasons not to kill animals. Hang on!
    Michael (Miki) Perla

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  4. Eating less of everything,
    I guess, is not an easy thing.
    Even if together we all scream,
    It would never become a marketing scheme.

    ReplyDelete