Moderation

My youngest daughter is a vegetarian. The rest of the residents of our happy home are not. It's a very amicable live and let live environment. We respect her right to choose not to eat meat and she respects our right to choose to eat it. All three of us have, at some point or another, attempted the vegetarian lifestyle ourselves. It never took. We loves us some beef. Because I swore I would not be one of those mothers who cooks multiple meals every night, I have taken to cooking predominately vegetarian at home. Every now and then I'll make a meal that includes meat and make a little meatless alternative for my little veg, but for the most part we only get meat when we go out to eat. It's respectful to her, it's better for us, and it's pretty darn cost-effective.

She is out of town this week, visiting my parents.

We are having a meat-orgy of unprecedented proportions. We eased in with Chicken Cordon Bleu. Meat and cheese wrapped in meat. Then we had BLT's - heavy on the B, moderate on the T, L was offered as an option but I'm not sure any of us took it. We indulged in a simple ground beef recipe that we all enjoy but that doesn't taste good at all with meat substitute. Ask me how I know. But last night... Oh, last night our meat-a-palooza got serious.

It was steak night.

Because we so rarely indulge, I gave Tom $20 and told him to pick up steaks on the way home from work. He passes a Whole Foods on the way home and I only have quick local access to Kroger. We never have steak; we should have the good stuff.

I'm not kidding, we talked about this meal for, like, three days. We were seriously psyched about these steaks.

He called from his cell. "I'm going in to pick up the steaks. What should I get?"

"The best you can get for $20 for 3 people. Quality over quantity. Ask the folks at the counter for advice. They'll be happy to help. They'll feel important."

The phone rang again in about ten minutes. "Three T-bones, baby!"

"Three T-bones for $20? That must've been one helluva sale!"

"I kinda supplemented your $20."

"By what?"

"By doubling it."

There was a tone of giddy anticipation in his voice that is usually reserved for those evenings when both girls have sleepovers.

I hummed while I prepared the baked potatoes and the corn. I hummed a little steaky song I made up myself. "Steak, steak, I'm gonna have steak. Steak on the grill, gonna grill some steak." I guess you really need the melody to get the full effect. It was totally a good song though. I could tell, 'cause it made me feel all tingly inside.

"When is Daddy getting home with the steaks?"

"Soon! Set the table - cause he's only gonna throw 'em on the grill long enough to warm 'em up a little bit."

"ouagh" (that's my daughter making a sound no mother should ever hear her daughter make)

Once those steaks were on our plates, there was no room for anything else. Our entire plates were eclipsed by meat. Grill marks on the outside, dark pink on the inside. Steaks as big as a dinner plate. Times three. We couldn't speak, we just consumed. Lea had no desire to supplement her meal with potatoes or corn on the cob, but both were on the table. No one had any room for any on their plate. Tom and I put a little dent in our meat then put a potato on our plate. Tom still didn't have enough room, so he cut off a huge piece of steak and stacked it on top of what was already on his plate, using the bottom steak as a surface upon which to cut his top steak into bite sized pieces.

At this point Lea was squatting on her chair gnawing on a bone. When I told her to please sit on her bottom she growled at me and turned away from the table, hunched protectively around her meat, throwing furtive glances over her shoulder from time to time to make sure we knew that that piece of carnage was HERS.

We finished it, folks.

I'm not proud of that, but we did.

When I got on Facebook the next morning, I noticed that all three of us had updated our statuses to mention our steak.

Folks.

Seriously.

This is a lesson in moderation. If we hadn't been so completely deprived for so very long, I doubt that any one of us would've behaved like animals. I think I need to send the veg to a friend's house at least once a month so that the rest of us can meet our base needs. A nice little steak - the size of the palm of our hands - served with a baked potato and a nice green salad. Maybe even a little wine for the grown ups. We'll use cutlery and everything.

But the story won't be nearly as fun.



I know, I know, No One Cares What You Had For Lunch. But come on. It was steak. And besides - it was dinner.