Was it the language? Well…it’s true that while my exceptional language skills allowed me to translate rather soon after my arrival such Spanish terms like T-bone, other cuts remained a mystery. Was the butcher himself not obliging? Never! Was it the meat itself? Of course, it did look substantially different, not remotely close to cuts I could then recognize, but it was still, after all, just meat. So what happened over twenty years ago when I moved to Mexico? Was it the butchering process itself that was distasteful? Certainly no more so than was normal. I cannot claim to have been removed from the process. In fact, our chest freezers always were brimming with venison, quail, dove, rabbit, frog legs, turtle, and occasionally alligator. And though I have had to defend hunting practices as an adult whose consciousness has certainly undergone change, I grew up being accustomed to seeing freshly killed animals being prepared for dinner or for freezing. Since my father and brothers were hunters, as were most of the males I knew in South Florida where I grew up, they provided our table with a constant supply of fresh meat. A rabbit with its feet, as well as providing a built-in good-luck talisman, was familiar to me. And last Spring when I led two different groups of women through the souks of Morocco, I may have been the only person completely inured to the dripping animal heads placed enticingly on the counters of the colorful butcher shops.īut in the grand scheme of things, a chicken with its head is still obviously a chicken. Mexico? My son’s favorite food is head tacos ( tacos de cabeza) from a local food stall which displays it’s semi-bare, lewdly grinning heads all in a row-clearly a mark of pride over how many have been sold. Although these animals provided a unique challenge when faced with my one dull knife, I still managed.
Even when chickens were purchased with their heads still attached and rabbits came unseparated from their furry feet to prove that they weren’t cats, my carnivorous habits persevered. Even in sophisticated Paris, where I lived with my cousin, a trip to the boucherie with its horse-head sign didn’t slow me down either. And when I moved to Abu Dhabi, where meat is killed by the humane practices prescribed by the Prophet Mohammad, I still didn’t flinch. I ate my way through every kebab house that placed itself in my path at mealtime throughout countries such as Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. Journeying through Afghanistan, where fly-encrusted fresh carcasses were hung in doorways and hacked on all day by butchers who sold their meat wrapped in newspaper, should have given me pause. And one trip to a "foreign" butcher shop just might push you over the edge. I learned over thirty years ago, when I left my carnivorous comfort zone and moved abroad, that, in fact, there might be serious reasons other than health concerns to become a vegetarian. Stray a bit from your familiar turf, however, and a whole new world could reveal itself. This may come as a surprise to Americans who are accustomed to shopping in American grocery stores where everything is sanitized, tidy, clearly weighed, and labeled with familiar terms in a familiar language.