The Butcher and the Vegetarian - Tara Austen Weaver (2010)
The author was bought up in a household with a mother who was a strict vegetarian, and even though she tried the odd hotdog, she never really commited to eating the flesh. Later on in her twenties though she finds that after feeling rubbish for some time, her doctor recommend the addition of meat to her diet.
So a lot of the book is taken up with hearing about Taras adventures of trying steak and meatballs, and she to her credit takes a lot of time to find ethical farmers and goes and visits the slaughterhouse. There is a lot of discussion surrounding the ethical reasons for eating and not eating animals. All of which I understan. Personally, I don't know if I could eat meat, if I had to kill it myself, and I would like to think of the animals I eat being treated humanely. I do feel guilty if I don't buy free range chickens, eggs or pork. I always think of Food Inc, where it shows chickens who never see the sky or touch the ground in their lifetime. In New Zealand I think that most of the cows and sheep we consume, get to live their lives outside in the sun, eating green NZ grass.
I have had my own periods without meat. A few years as a child, when I wouldn't eat it and lived on eggs on toast for two meals every day. In my twenties I lived in a vegetarian flat for a while, and a few years ago, after a few stomach problems, I had ten months without red meat, although I still consumed a lot of chicken. But I still go back to liking steak and chicken, although I wouldn't consider myself a big meat eater.
So it was a thought provoking read, although I thought she was a bit limited in how she choose to go about discovering meat. There are so many awesome recipes and cooking shows, and although butchers may sell the meat, I think that they are probably not all gourmet cooks bristling with recipes or ideas.
So a worthy 3/5 that I enjoyed finishing today at lunch, while I ate my minature bacon, tomato and egg pies.
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