My (earnest, irate) thoughts

One of my favorite meals to prepare used to be chicken Bryan, a Carraba’s recipe that involves chicken breasts heavily salted and peppered, with minced onions, garlic and sun-dried tomatoes simmered in lemon juice and white wine (gasp!), with crumbled goat cheese on top.

Anyhow, when I married Yusuf, I was disappointed not to cook with alcohol anymore. Lots of recipes call for a half-cup of beer or wine; I asked if it was OK to keep ‘wine, just for cooking with’ in the house. He said no. I said, ‘but it all cooks off.’ He said no. He had never had alcohol, never in his 32 years. For him it was always a non-issue; he had no desire to take a break from reality, no matter how harsh it gets. And since he didn’t want to drink it, he didn’t want to do anything close to it, either (like cook with it). We each have a weak side, where evil whispers works ‘best’ — but for Yusuf, alcohol wasn’t it.

I gave up drinking slightly before I became Muslim (the ix-nay on alcohol and necessity of the headscarf were the two main deterrents to my nafs) after reading a lot about the well-documented harms of alcohol, and the benefits of a diet lacking in alcohol. As I’ve mentioned before, the antioxidants in red wine — often given as a ‘benefit’ of light to moderate imbibing — are less than the antioxidants in blueberries, artichokes, blackberries, strawberries, apples, plums, pecans or pinto beans. So yeah, there’s more than one way to neutralize those free radicals. And no one ever got a blueberry hangover.

That was two years ago. But recently I wanted to take Yusuf to the Melting Pot, a fondue place that I had enjoyed since high school. There’s cheese fondue started off with beer or white wine, and a broth to cook meat, seafood and vegetables in, and finally a chocolate fondue, often flambéd with a little liquor. Frankly, I had a few concerns — would this place be able to accommodate us?

And yes, yes they could. We even got a waiter who had waited on a gaggle of Muslim ladies the night before, so he knew just what we needed — the spinach-and-artichoke cheese fondue (started off with vegetable broth), the Seafood Trio with broth (we’re going to try The Vegetarian next time) and a chocolate fondue (with no table-side flambé). But even with all his knowledge, our waiter still tried at the very last minute to give us a show with the alcohol flambé, saying, ‘It’ll all cook off anyway’. ‘No!’ we screeched together. He was disappointed, I think, not to get to play with fire.

Anyhow, before you start thinking, “Wow, talk about missing the forest for the trees, obeying the letter of the law — they are getting so hung up on the particulars. There’s a huge gap between drinking it and cooking with it” you should know this: It is perhaps the greatest culinary myth of our time that alcohol burns off, or cooks out, within a few seconds or minutes of heat being added: Research proves that the alcohol does not all cook out.

I love the conversation between Jules and Vincent in Pulp Fiction about why the former doesn’t eat pork (In sum, “I don’t eat nothin’ that ain’t got sense enough to disregard its own feces”). It’s a good point.

“Forbidden to you for food are dead meat, blood, and the flesh of the swine.” Qur’an 5:4

Both the Bible and the Qur’an prohibit the eating of pork. Muslims and orthodox Jews observe this strictly, though many Christians do not (my grandparents are seventh-day Adventists who avoid it, but they are an exception). I remember when I was reading the Bible as a teenager. I made the ambitious mistake of beginning at Genesis, so by the time I got to Leviticus I was dying of boredom. But I couldn’t help but notice the prohibition of pork which, at the time, was a fair part of my typically American diet. Distressed, I asked my father why we ate pork.

Aside: I will never understand why I considered him an expert on theology. When I learned about Muhammad’s prophecy to the Arabs in 10th-grade world history class and asked, “How do we know he’s not a prophet?” My father said, “Only Jews can be prophets, honey. They are God’s chosen people.” This is an openly racist, and sadly common, misreading of the difference between ‘family’ and ‘race’. As my husband would say, “God is a nationalist, you think so?”

Anyway, Dad’s answer was that Jesus said it is what comes out of your mouth, not what goes into it, that makes a man unclean. But knowing what I know now, about various people changing the words of the Bible for personal and political reasons, I still wouldn’t say that Jesus never said this. But the quote doesn’t change the fact that Jesus himself never ate pork. The quote also doesn’t change the physiology of pigs or humans. And the quote is certainly not advising Christians to include pork in their diet. It’s interesting that Paul was writing to the Romans (who very much dug on swine) when he, or his followers, casually removed the ancient prohibition. As I’ve written before, I maintain that Paul was a shape-shifter — someone who changed the words of the unchanging God to appeal to a broader audience. Further reading: Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why

“Do not eat swine. They have divided hooves, but they do not chew the cud. These are unclean animals.” Leviticus 11:7-8

The Hebrew words used to describe unclean meats (like pork) can be translated as foul, polluted and putrid. Which puts them, according to the lexicon of the Bible at least, in the same category with human feces. But why?

According to The Maker’s Diet by Jordan S. Rubin, a book that tries to pinpoint a Biblically sound diet, the pig is not clean because of its physiology. “Clean animals that chew the cud have an alimentary canal and a secondary cud receptacle. Essentially, they have three stomachs available to process their clean, vegetation-based food into “flesh” in a process that takes more than twenty-four hours in general…Pigs, on the other hand, never limit their diet to vegetation. They will eat anything they can find, including their own young and sick or dead pigs. The pig’s single-stomach arrangement is very simple in design and function and it is combined with a limited excretory system. Four hours after the pig has eaten its polluted swill and other putrid, offensive matter, man may eat the same swill secondhand off the ribs of the pig.”

Then he asks an insightful question: Did anything biologically happen to the pig since Biblical times, or did the digestive tract of man have some miraculous transformation?

Nope. But most practicing Christians, when asked why they eat pork, don’t have a better answer than Vincent: “Because bacon tastes good.” Surely, as religious people, lifelong health and protecting the body from harm should be more important than 30 seconds on the tastebuds. But even if the pig’s behavior and physiology don’t convince you to quit eating pork, here’s some information about American pig farms that should: Vast Lagoons of Pig Feces.

Just finished Skinny Bitch in a single evening. It’s not a book for people who can’t handle the (vulgar, funny) truth. Those chicks are mean. They called me a moron, a fat slob, and other stuff I can’t repeat that made me burst out laughing.

When my husband came home from school last night — my eyes shining with new vegan fervor — I asked if we could try the 30-day menu in the book. (God bless him for tolerating my bandwagon-jumping.) You know, to try it out, see how we feel, lose weight, assure ourselves it can be done. As I was reading to him from the menu, he mentioned fish. I shook my head. “No fish?” he asked incredulously. A minute later, he mentioned yogurt. I shook my head again. “No yogurt?” he asked, even more incredulously, because yogurt = Turkishness. But he agreed to try, if only for 30 days. Yusuf mentioned he is very impressed with Rusty, a vegan for quite some time now.

Here’s a great article on how the choice to be vegetarian has always existed inside Islam. Some scholars, like freelance monotheist Karen Armstrong, say vegetarianism may be the ideal Islamic diet. Another Mystic Saint article cites the other one, and has other good references. I’m telling you, folks, this is why I love this religion: a path of moderation to God, sensible answers to every question.