Eat the Meat.

Most people are blessed with learning table manners early in life. Phrases such as: “Please pass the bread” or “May I have some more, spaghetti, please?” are considered courtesy phrases for most families, however, they are not at the Lauer table. You do not ask, you take. You do not wait, you act. Ideally as soon and swiftly as possible. Not that there wasn’t ever enough food to go around, but for some reason that threat always hung over your head. It’s a lot like riding the Chinatown bus from Boston – New York; there will always be a seat for you, but since there is a crowd swarming the door, you swarm too, just because maybe there won’t be a seat this one time. Or worse, you will get stuck sitting by the guy who is taking back 3 bags of (mostly) dead poultry. Ew.

But I digress.

Let me just state for the record I was born disgusted by meat. No joke. I eat it now, and ground meat and chicken on the bone still makes me a little queasy, but one of my earliest table memories is escaping the table with a napkin full of hamburger stuffed in my pocket so I could flush it down the toilet. Otherwise, I would face the penalty of sitting at the table in front of that damn hamburger “until I finished it”. Meat just disgusted me from the get go, and I have no idea why. Another fave method of disposing of meat was requesting to wear a bib at dinner, and slipping the meat into the pockets of it. I seriously must have been 3 years old, and I would like to think my parents were on to me. But who knows. At any rate, I can tell you that when you ask for a bib at the age of 7, the parents start to get suspicious.

Not eating meat in Wisconsin is simply unacceptable. End of story. So, despite my rejection of it every time it was served at the dinner table, it kept showing up on my plate. It makes so much sense to me as to why this happened when I think about it now as an adult: growing up more or less on the poverty line in rural Wisconsin meant that meat was in fact the most accessible and therefore affordable food. People hunt, and not only for themselves. People will hunt for their neighbors, too. And it isn’t for sport; it’s to get them through the winter. As in, they don’t have the money to purchase food sometimes, so they rely on the freezer of meat. It seems unbelievable, but every time I go home I am reminded that it in fact exists. This is a rather sensitive issue for me, and it is basically the main reason I want to punch those smug podium vegetarians/vegans in the face. Clearly I don’t care if someone chooses to not eat meat, I myself have just told you I couldn’t eat it before I could even comprehend issues such as “animal rights” or “standing up against mass production of foods” or “momentary food fads”. “Smug” and “Podium” are the key words in my distaste.

Again, I digress.

When I was still young and impressionable, whenever I would pick at the edge of gristle surrounding my meat, my dad would patiently remind me that that slimy white stuff actually “tasted like candy”. Um, really Dad? Candy? Because I’ve never seen candy that has looked like this before….

If you want to know the strangest thing about this whole meat debacle, it’s that I always asked for McDonald’s. I don’t even know how old I was before I ate at McDonald’s, or any other fast food place. They just weren’t around where we lived. However, my grandparents lived in the great metropolis of St. Paul, and every time we drove there, the 2 hours road trip included at least a 15 minute opening statement made my the kids (Me, Liz, Sarah, Nick…the early days, still…only 4 of us) on why we should -- no, why we NEED, to stop at McDonald’s. I imagine it was like how most kids beg to go to DisneyWorld. We just wanted to visit Micky D’s, for Christ sake. And every time, my Dad would say “but I can smell grandma’s cooking from here!” That was meant as a reassurance that food was on its way, but we didn’t take it as such (for obvious reasons….see last blog about jello…).

Anyway, I think it’s funny I craved a burger from Mc D’s, but would go to extreme lengths to not eat meat at home (I once barfed up a venison steak at the table). Now, of course, it’s all so clear to me: it wasn’t even craving meat, per say, but more the idea of that tiny burger. Once we finally got to go to McDonald’s I was probably like 11 years old, and every time after that when my Dad made burgers on the grill at home, I would request mine “McDonald’s style”: flat as fuck, and with all the flavor burnt out of them. As he is a bit of a meat connoisseur of German heritage who likes to make and smoke his own sausages and jerky, I can only look back on those days and say: Sorry about that, Dad….

Well, I’m off topic again.

The point about family meals is this: You take what you can get. And God help you if you ask for anything more.