Like Buying the Cow a Martini

As a teenager, I decided quite suddenly that I should be a vegetarian.

I thought it would be more healthy, maybe help me lose a few pounds. Also? I lived in Northern California, a stone's throw from Berkeley. This decision may or may not have had something to do with the field trip my English class took to see "Macbeth" at the Berkeley Rep, followed by a walk down Telegraph and a stop at the Berkeley Whole Foods Market.

This also should probably have been the first clue that I would turn out to be something of a liberal. And a democrat. So there ya go, parents - there we see the fruits of molding an impressionable mind in the seat of American Liberalism.

Some of the ideas spawned in me in Northern California have stuck. The vegetarianism, however, lasted just under a week. To be specific, it lasted until my dad threw a few steaks on the charcoal grill.

I guess I'm just a carnivore at heart. I love red meat, and I eat my steak with a "the redder the better" mentality. Just shake a little black pepper on it, flame kiss that sucker, and plate it, please.

I have found, however, that I do actually have a limit when it comes to gratuitous consumption of living things. This epiphany comes courtesy of my husband, and his new favorite story out of Singapore.

I am referring to the delicacy dish of "Drunken Prawn". In the states, we get a dish called "Drunken Noodles" which generally just means there was a splash of some kind of liquor thrown into the sauce. Not so, Drunken Prawn.

A bowl of live prawns is brought to the table. The server then pours liquor over the top of the clamoring prawns, and the diner watches as their dinner gets good and schnockered, grows calm and sleepy.

The final flourish comes in one of two ways. Either the sleepy prawns are then carried back to the kitchen to be cooked up in a broth or some such... OR... for a big finish, the bowl of thoroughly drunken prawns and liquor are lit on fire, thus cooking the prawns alive.

According to T, this is delicious. According to me, that's a big NEGATIVE good buddy.

I refuse to equate the cows grazing in the nearby pastures to a delicious, juicy delmonico.

And you can bet I'm not about to bring the cow a nice martini before digging into my porterhouse.