The Luv Doc: Meathead

Dear Luv Doc,

New girlfriend has an eating disorder. She won't eat anything with meat in it. This is starting to affect my mood. Should I drop her or just drop her off at her apartment on the way out to dinner?

– MeatMeatSizzler

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Your girlfriend is right: Meat is murder. Well, I mean the way it makes it to most people's tables. I suppose if you were dining off roadkill deer carcasses (because not even a Frenchman could get hungry enough to eat armadillo), that wouldn't exactly be murder. You could maybe call it vehicular deerslaughter. Having been in the van when a friend took out a full-sized doe on a misty evening out near F-Burg, let me assure you that roadkilling a deer for meat is one of those juice-ain't-worth-the-squeeze situations. Cost-wise you're better off buying 100 pounds of filet mignon.

Personally, I don't have a problem with vegetarians. They're a little farty and occasionally sanctimonious, but so are Irish Catholic Republicans. I will agree that slimy, wet, tasteless tofu is an abomination and when paired with a kale-lemongrass smoothie can be a serious environmental hazard, but the combination of shepherd's pie and Guinness is a culinary war crime. I am not exactly sure how shepherd's pie is made, but my guess is that it involves six or seven species of roadkill thrown in a blender with some cloves and curry. It's like someone dug up an Irish graveyard, stuffed it in a pie crust, and baked it.

I know I am probably being too hard on the Irish, but only because it is a culinary tradition with which I am intimately familiar. For all I know, were it not for the potato famine, my Irish ancestors might not have resorted to putting pureed varmints in pie crusts. Truthfully, the French seem to have an equal distaste for anything outside the animal kingdom other than grapes, but they somehow figured out how to make even the most repulsive of creatures delicious. Imagine if the Irish decided to cook snails? Thank God for Irish vegetarian cuisine – and by that I mean Guinness and Jameson. Otherwise the British would have real trouble on their hands.

I am starting to drift here so I will get back on topic: Considering how many meat-eaters there are in the world and how grisly/repugnant most meat processing facilities are, I think your girlfriend really does hold the moral high ground. That said, nobody likes it when someone gets on their high horse – and not just because it's a waste of good meat. It seems to me that both of you could benefit from a little compromise. My bet is that your hard-on for meat has more to do with your unwillingness to change than it has with some sort of ill-founded self-righteousness. There are whole swaths of humanity who get by just fine without it. In fact, there is some really amazing vegetarian cuisine right here in Austin. Open your mind and your colon will follow. Maybe then you'll stop rhoid-raging about your girlfriend's health choices.