The safest place in the world

… is the kitchen of a lapsed vegetarian.

“Did the chicken touch there? I think the chicken touched there. Oh, and then I touched the olive oil after I touched the chicken. Maybe I should mark this knife with a big red dot to show that once it was used to cut raw chicken… Or should I put all these utensils in a pot of water and boil them for sterility?”

My kitchen paranoia is off-the-hook as I regress from vegetarianism to organic meatatarian.

I cooked meat once in the whole near decade that I was a vegetarian. And that was to make Irish Stew on St Patrick’s Day for some of our friends. Because my family Irish Stew recipe will make grown men and babies cry (in happiness). But while the dish turned out be-a-u-tifully I could not relax about the stewing beef in my kitchen. I thought it would be no big deal — I’m not squeamish about flesh, was proud of the organic meat I had sourced, and hadn’t had any problems with the smell of cooking meat. But the presence of /blood/ in a kitchen that has known only veggies and wheats and dairy is just bizarre. It was dripping red danger on my low-end porous rental apartment food preparation surfaces, and I didn’t know how to handle it. Suddenly all of those over-the-top commercials about kitchen cleaners made sense to me. Of course people would want industrial strength disinfectant sprays and disposable wipes for every surface. And where could I get some /right now/?

I’m now over that, somewhat. But it is still there receded into the background, and part of the whole experience of the foreigness of meat to me. I am ignorant to its fleshy ways. By being a vegetarian throughout my late teens and twenties, I completely missed out on the growing pains and life lessons of preparing meat for myself (not that I spent that time becoming an astounding vegetarian cook and have that to fall back on, damned squandered youth). But if I ever had a memory for how to prepare, cook, store meat, it is now lost. Bake a chicken? No idea. Stick it in a loaf pan and broil it for 4 hours? Slice the skin? Cook it frozen? Wrap it in tin foil, shake it over my head and leave it in the moonlight? All equally plausible options.

I am ignorant to the point of laughability. And don’t especially know where to start. Which is why I am starting with baby steps. So as the chicken breast I deboned sits in my oven at 350 degrees until my brand new meat thermometer tells me it has an internal temperature of 165F, I will sit here eating my steamed kale and pondering where to go for guidance. Is there such a thing as a course in remedial meat preparation for ex-vegetarians?