perfidy

I don't eat much meat. This isn't so much a moral choice (in that I'm not a vegetarian because I can't stand the idea of something suffering so I can live) as an aesthetic one. Let me explain. I do eat a vegetarian diet on a regular basis and most of my cooking is vegetarian cuisine. (Don't laugh - give me one hour and the right ingredients and I will make you forget there's no meat on that plate.) There are three main reasons I don't eat much meat: my ongoing effort to maintain my svelte womanly figure; the fact that I'm a cheap bastard and gram for gram vegetable protein is cheaper than animal protein if you are willing to spend a little time cooking it; and aesthetics. The first two are, I presume, relatively self-explanatory.

But what do I mean by aesthetics? I mean this: the chicken you get in the shrink-paks in the grocery store is rubbery and utterly flavorless, an insult to the very idea of chicken. Beef from the grocery store, though sometimes very good, is generally totally unexciting. Moreover, all the hormones and drugs they pump factory-farmed meat fulla probably isn't good for you. Now, before you go whipping off a reply comment telling me that I am pumped fulla shit peddling that alarmist tree-hugger pabulum, hear me out. We're all mammals. There is some circumstantial evidence that the "stuff" they use to get a chicken to market in seven weeks makes it into the meat, and therefore into your body. Now, beyond the whiff of "false but accurate" creepiness that such a notion carries with it, that's just not how I roll. I eat meat very rarely, and when I do, I want it to friggin' count. Growth accelerants, hormones, and antibiotics affect the quality of the meat, and I don't like to pay to eat crap food. I live on the seacoast and as a consequence I eat a lot of fish. I am lucky enough to live close enough to working seaports that I can get up early on Saturday, drive over the bridge, and buy a slab of Arctic char that four hours earlier was fighting for its life. That's living, I tell you. If I lived in Dallas, you can bet I'd be eating me some steak. Good food is a gift to the body and the soul.

So why is it so damn hard to find good chicken? I just had a delicious lunch of half a roasted chicken at one of Boston's best restaurants. The dark meat was gamy and just slightly bitter, and the white meat was mellow and rich. In other words, it *tasted like chicken*. Why did I have to spend way too much money to get chicken that *tasted like damn chicken*?

And why is it so damn hard to find good beef? Well... strike that. If you're lucky you can pick up a six dollar steak at the local grocery that will satisfy your omnivorous blood-lust, be tender and juicy, and taste faintly of what the cow ate. America does beef pretty well. But more likely, you will pay six bucks and end up with a strip of shoe leather. These days, when it's time to eat my thrice-a-year steak, I go to one of the local farms who raise cows and pick up something they've killed themselves. I usually end up paying $20, but I also usually end up passing out in a pleasure-coma with a big goofy smile on my face. Why is that so hard to achieve? Cows is cows!

I would go into a whole tirade abou tpork at this point and how it no longer tastes like anything at all and yet nobody seems to notice, like a blank canvas some bullshit artist pimps in a gallery for $5000 while black-clad anorexics coo and ahh about her bold use of negative space, but I think I've made my point.

In a nation that has perfected consistency in preparation (the Big Mac always tastes like a yummy Big Mac), why is it exceptional to find quality meat? Is it market forces? As someone who wants their meat to taste like, um, meat, am I in a tiny minority? Help me out here, before I go home to a dinner of Buffalo-style tofu (which is, I have to say, delicious).