Memorial Day weekend here in Los Angeles, and other than THE WHOLE WORLD getting married this weekend (possibly due to the long weekend, summer months allow for fantastic sunsets, etc.) it was a great weekend for barbecuing, and the Yan family was no different. Corn, Korean style steaks, spicy pork, and Costco Grade A sausages were on the menu. But should they have been?
I've never even tried vegetarian, meat's always been on the menu at the Yan household, and it wasn't until I became an adult that I consciously went a whole day without meat (I may have just forgotten to eat meat once in a while, didn't keep count). I have gone a few days consecutively without eating meat, and I gotta say it's not a fun experience. My body feels empty inside, I'm constantly a little hungry, and I crave meats, anything. Tofu, beans, and other protein just don't fulfill the human desire like a raw, juicy slice of steak does. Alas, people do get used to being vegetarian, and even vegan (some vegans even judge meat-eaters and think they're better than us, which I think is a little extreme but maybe they have a point?) Vegetarians/ vegans can eat their meals with a clean conscience of knowing they didn't have to kill a living thing to have their meal. Certainly there's been distinctions about "what kind of animals are better to kill" like shrimp and fish don't have brains but cows and pigs and other farm animals feel emotions, etc., etc. To me it seems like that's a pretty hard distinction to draw, every single animal in the animal kingdom has been featured in an animated film (mostly Disney) and seemed really cool and too cute to eat certainly, so eating a snail seems just as morally damaging as eating a cow or chicken, or dare I say it, dog (in some cultures).
Ultimately, my moral code allows me to eat meat, but recently I've tried to do it sparingly, cuz not only is it wasteful to eat too much meat, health studies show it's not good to have too much (usually very oily, high in cholestrol, etc.) Barbecues, then, seem a little excessive to me. I would rather have a Southwestern salad (with chicken) than a big cheeseburger off a grill, I'd rather eat BCD Tofu (a famous Korean Tofu place) than Korean BBQ, and I'd rather have Mapo Tofu than Peking Duck at a Chinese restaurants. All my preferences have a little meat in them, but not excessively like BBQs do, and there's other nutrients that I can justify I'm going for a balanced diet, rather than just inhaling meat like some BBQs tend to do (I'm going to Kansas City next weekend so I'll be challenged to uphold my principles).
You know what place doesn't hold back on meats? In N' Out Burger. Especially on Friday nights, that' is the HOPPING place to be, 12AM Friday night/ Saturday morning is maybe the most crowded time for IN N' Out. It's mostly the late night food eaters craving the juiciness of the restaurant and losing all the discipline that they had over the course of the week (or never had at all, based on the size and portion amounts of the people I observed at In N Out). America, at least, seems like a place of excess, and BBQ is another example, just with meats.
Also, this weekend started the Muslim tradition of Ramadan, which first of all must be a great way to go on a diet, I guess unless you binge eat a lot after sunset and it actually becomes an unhealthy way to eat. It's also gotta be really tough for Ramadan to land on the summer months (the days are even longer than usual, and I gotta imagine border line impossible in places like Alaska where it almost never gets dark). It also seems like great practice for maintaining discipline about food, and indeed that seems to be what Ramadan is about, understanding people less fortunate and who don't have access to food like some of us do. I personally would get pretty hangry for about half the day, and it'd be an extended time of crankiness and risk of me blowing up about relatively mundane topics, so more power to the people who celebrate Ramadan.
Fantasize on,
Robert Yan
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