The Meat Lover's Meatless Cookbook - Kim O'Donnel [2]
Robert S. Lawrence, M.D.
Founding Director, Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future
Center for a Livable Future Professor and Professor of Environmental
Health Sciences, Health Policy and International Health, Johns Hopkins
Bloomberg School of Public Health
INTRODUCTION
LIFE BEGINS WITH STEAK. . . .
At least mine did. See Exhibit A on the right. That’s me, documented in gloriously greasy detail in this Polaroid, circa 1967. Yes, instead of a teething ring, my mother gave me a T-bone to gum on. I was hooked.
Back in the day, meat was what we had for dinner (and lunch and breakfast), with applesauce as a vegetable. My love for the bone was unbounded and soon expanded to poultry, fried chicken in particular. It’s what I insisted on for my seventh birthday party. (I later used it to seduce the man who would become my husband, lest you think this story ends on the vegetarian side of the tracks.)
But in the 1980s my father’s (and paternal grandmother’s) fatal heart attacks brought an end to our family’s meat marathon. Alarmed by our dangerously high cholesterol levels, the doctors insisted on it.
My mother did a clean sweep of the pantry. We went cold turkey on cold cuts. We switched from butter to margarine (as if we knew better then?). Full fat became skim milk, and to my great horror: no more bacon and eggs. It was hell. Our family’s all-or-nothing approach showed no understanding of eating in moderation.
The pent-up cravings exploded a few years later when I was in college. I tossed aside the doctor’s advice and renewed my relationship with an old friend, the pepperoni pizza. As a college grad, my budding interest in the kitchen literally fanned the flames, and I maintained a meat-heavy diet, adding a few new recipes from such books as The New Basics Cookbook by Julee Rosso and Sheila Lukins. When I needed a good rationalization for my meat-eating ways, I looked at my roommate, Kat, who called herself a vegetarian and lived on potatoes, grilled cheese sandwiches, and ice cream. How healthy could that be?
The next twenty years only led to more of the same. I have formal culinary training and a career as an established online food personality. I’ve traveled and studied cuisines, techniques, ingredients, and tastemakers. I’ve equipped my batterie de cuisine and built an impressive library of cookbooks. And to this day, meat still figures into my life in a big, big way.
As this bone-gnawing baby can attest, I truly understand what it means to have a one-track appetite, to believe in your heart and soul that there is nothing else for dinner but meat—that a meatless meal may happen now and then but can never really satisfy. I’m not alone; Americans eat more than 200 pounds of meat per capita a year. But my experiences have taught me to understand that if I succumb to every craving for crispy-coated, buttermilk-infused chicken thighs, well, I’ll eventually look like a Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade balloon.
Exactly what inspired this meat lover to write a meatless cookbook came from an unexpected source, my mother’s sausage-loving longtime companion.
He had just suffered a massive heart attack, and it wasn’t his first. Although he survived, he stubbornly refused to make any dietary adjustments, regardless of the consequences. Exasperated, my mother called me for some low-fat dinner ideas for “Mister Sausage.” On that particular day, she mentioned that she had an eggplant and some vine tomatoes from a local farm stand.
“Make eggplant stacks,” I said. “Grill the eggplant, slather it with olive oil, then stack it with tomato, a small amount of feta. Repeat. Basil would be good, too.”
“Sounds really good,” Mom replied. “I’ll give this a try.” Off she went in pursuit of feta and basil. And whaddya know? Mister Sausage liked it. Meat was never mentioned. Although a pork chop was probably in his near future, this was a chink in his meaty armor.
For me, it was a revelatory moment. I wondered if I could just get Mom and Mister Sausage (and me and my husband) to be