Y’know what I’d like to try? Dormouse like the Romans used to eat. They still eat them in Slovenia and Croatia. I’m a history freak, so I’d love the experience.
Ortolan would be interesting too.
Huh. Had I known, I might have hunted one of those down when I was in Belgium. I’m curious enough to want to try horse meat, since IIRC it’s illegal in the US.
I think I’d be irritated if it was dog; that’s just far enough out of the pale that people deserve a heads-up to what they’ll be eating, and someone who would just spring that on someone is deliberately trying to be a dick and/or prove how “cool” they are.
I’d be incensed if it was some endangered species or something- I like new stuff, but not enough for that.
Wait, what?
An old joke riddle:
A man goes into a restaurant. He orders albatross. He gets a plate, eats it, gets a horrified look on his face, and commits suicide. Why?
Because years earlier the man was shipwrecked with his son and his wife. Him and his son were starving, and eventually his son died. But then his wife brought to him a meal of albatross, he ate it, and was saved.
When he went to the restaurant, he ordered albatross, but as soon as he ate it he realized it tasted nothing like the albatross he had on the island, which means he ate his dead son. Unable to live with the guilt, he commits suicide.
I am also a “collector” of food experiences. When I was in Iceland, I tried whale, puffin, and seagull. The puffin was extremely gamey (though not as gamey as black bear). The seagull had an interesting taste, like duck with a bit of funk. The whale was just greasy.
I once had an opportunity to acquire some python meat to prepare. I read carefully to see how best to treat it. Because a big snake is all active muscle, it can get tough. So I portioned the meat and tried three different approaches. It didn’t matter; whether slow-braised, flash-fried, or ground into meatballs, it came out like pencil eraser. And it tasted odd.
Also, apparently there’s a lot of ammonia in python muscle, so my house smelled like pee for a couple of days.
A third scenario. You’ve been served a mystery meal by your host. While you’re eating it, your host informs you that it’s human placenta.
Do you freak out?
Me? I’m not knowingly eating any mystery meat and I’m going to be really pissed off if somebody sneaks it into a meal they’re serving me. I’ve voluntarily eaten some strange meats - but I always knew what I was eating.
If I were not vegetarian, I would freak out over the dog meat, and not because of the fact that it’s simply dog meat. The way dog is prepared, the entire point of the way dog is prepared for consumption in this part of the world, is the cruelty involved, the maximization of the animal’s suffering. And that is all in the service of the malarkey known as “It’s good for men’s stamina”. It should be mentioned that dog meat is not exactly legal either. It’s evidently not explicitly outlawed, so it’s more of a grey area.
I lived in Germany and of course I saw horse butchers there, although I never sampled their wares. I would likely not freak out over that, though. There’s no “stamina” myth, AFAIK, attached to consumption of horse so the animal is dispatched legally.
Finally, I would be super upset if I ened up with soylent green on my plate.
I’m a vegetarian, because I don’t like meat, so I’m not participating. But the fact is that both those animals are not kosher, so in an alternate universe where the only difference is that Rivkah likes meat, I still don’t eat here, because I refuse to eat meat I have not been assured is kosher-- including chicken or beef that is not kosher chicken or beef.
If you outright lie to me, you are beyond contempt.
The only excuse I can think of for lying is some kind of starvation situation where I am squeamish about eating the non-kosher meat, which is perfectly allowable in a starvation situation, and you lie to me to save my life, then tell me the truth afterward in order to get me to eat it for the rest of the episode (that is, until, we hope, eventual rescue, or spring, or some other end to the starvation), without having to continually lie to me.
FWIW, I actually think I would find it easier, in such a dire situation, to eat the people who died in the crash, than to eat a horse or a dog, even one who had died naturally. Yes, in a starvation situation, I would choose cannibalism over eating horse or dog, even when the choice was not made in order to avoid slaughtering a live horse or dog in favor of an already-dead human. I guess I would choose prepared meat from the plane’s stowage (chicken, beef, even pork, whatever) before I’d choose people who died in the crash, but mainly because the stowage would be safer, not because I’d find it more palatable.
Also, I think the reason horse is preferable to dog for most people is that dogs are scavengers, and people generally don’t eat scavengers, shellfish excepted, nor obligate carnivores. “Traditional” food animals are strictly herbivores. No scavenger nor obligate carnivore is kosher. Pigs can eat anything, because they can synthesize every single vitamin they need, but they apparently will preferentially be herbivores if left to their own devices.
On that last bit, if anyone ever asks you what animal you’d want to be, “pig” is a good choice, for their ability to synthesize every necessary vitamin, and subsist on pretty much whatever diet is available.
I’d choose soylent green over horse or dog. Not that I’d be happy about it. Just saying.
Horse is legal here in Switzerland, and there are even butchers who specialize in horse meat.
I might be upset, because I might not like it. I don’t like lamb and many pork dishes and even some beef dishes, because I don’t like the meat. If I were single I would probably eat mostly vegetarian.
Dog would only be acceptable if it were a common meat in the area where I was eating. As it is not, at least not now, I would be rather annoyed. Technically it is legal to eat both dogs and cats in Switzerland. Doesn’t mean that I would expect either dog meat or cat meat on the table.
29 posts and no one has given props to this clever word play? For shame!
Anyway, the OP lost me at “mystery meat”. No thanks.
I’m a vegetarian for a few reasons, one of which is, especially living in Asia, I really would be taking a chance owing to shellfish health concerns for me. I’m also a Latter-day Saint and, while not unknown, the numbers of us LDS vegetarians isn’t that large and there is some guidance, some support within the faith community. So, I’m now wondering how you manage as both a praciticing vegetarian and an observant Jew. Do you mind sharing?
There’s no conflict whatsoever. I have a dairy kitchen. I make sure my dairy products are hekshered. I have a few pots and pans that are parve, and a shelf in the fridge that is parve, so if I invite people over who would have a problem with a dairy meal for some reason due to scheduling, not due to actually eating dairy products, I can serve a parve vegan meal. I don’t serve fish, although I would allow someone who asked to bring a kosher type of fish, and put it on my plates, since it wouldn’t render them non-kosher. No one has ever asked, though.
There is no actual requirement for a Jew to eat meat. I have heard some people say that you should not deprive yourself of things to no purpose, especially on Shabbes, so someone who wanted to eat meat, had access to kosher meat, and refrained from eating it, including on Shabbes, not for a health reason, would be doing something wrong, because you should bring out the best for Shabbes, but I don’t enjoy meat. I wouldn’t enjoy Shabbes if I forced myself to eat meat. If Shabbes became “forced meat day,” and therefore I didn’t look forward to it, that would go against the way Shabbes is supposed to be observed. I have discussed this with several rabbis, including some Orthodox rabbis, two of whom were Haredi.
I have invited people over who normally eat meat, on Shabbes, but they know I will be serving a vegetarian meal. They know whether it will be dairy or vegan. I am actually known for some of the dairy meals I can make, so that when the synagogue wants a dairy meal for a holiday, I’ve been asked to provide recipes, or even preside over the cooking. People who normally eat meat are usually happy to come for a dairy meal, particularly because many of them aren’t especially creative with dairy meals themselves.
When I serve a vegan meal, it will be because I have someone who is vegan attending-- usually more than one, and others are vegetarian who do not insist that every meal have eggs or dairy. If I invite people who normally eat meat to a vegan dinner, they are informed it will be vegan before they accept, so they know what they are accepting. They know that I know how to cook a vegan meal, so it will be good, and they know they will enjoy the company, and that if they want to share a meal with many of the people there, they pretty much have to sit down to a vegan meal; they accept with eyes open.
I don’t think it’s a violation of Shabbes for someone who happens to like meat in general to try something different once in a while, in good company.
And then, of course, I invite people for other than Shabbes meals. Most commonly I have guests on Shabbes, but I have them at other times as well.
I’m unsure as to whether I have answered the question, because I’m not sure why you would think there’d be a problem with being Jewish and vegetarian. Is it with going to other people’s houses to eat? I can eat a piece of toast with peanut butter before I leave, and then eat what little may be available to me at the table, and be fine; I don’t need a lot to eat at once. I eat before bedtime to make sure my blood sugar doesn’t fall overnight, so if I don’t get much at dinner, it’s not a big deal. Some people who know I’m vegetarian set something aside for me-- like, if they put drippings in the mashed potatoes, they’ll set some aside for me first. But I don’t mention it. I don’t expect special treatment, and like I said, I eat a little first, unless I know I’m going to a vegetarian home.
If I’m going to a gentile but vegan home, the food will pretty much be kosher by default, and I eat it. If it’s eggs & dairy, and gentile, frequently the gentiles actually look for hekshers on dairy food because they know that means it won’t have some hidden meat thing in it. I usually eat freely at those homes, unless I don’t know the people well-- stuff could have hidden fish in it as well.
If I didn’t answer the question, feel free to ask something more specific.
Technically, there is. But it only applies to meat you have sacrificed at the (non existent) temple in Jerusalem, so that requirement hasn’t been in effect for more than a thousand years.
To give Monty a shorter answer, it’s quite common for Jews to be vegetarian, and due to the complexities of the laws of kashrut (and the fact that different Jews follow slightly different rules, and that’s considered appropriate and acceptable) Jews tend to be comfortable accommodating the dietary requirements of other people. So it’s unlikely to ever be a problem.
To expand a little, even having grown up non-kosher, and obviously not keeping kosher now, i grew up aware of the importance of dietary restriction. I can reliably feed people who keep kosher. I can also safely feed people with celiac disease, deadly nightshade allergies, run of the mill peanut allergies, vegetarians, vegans, … I and aware of what I am feeding people and what it might have touched, and my friends trust me to feed them.
The only time I gave up and said, “yes, please bring something you can eat” is when I was hosting a vegan who was also keeping kosher for passover. She could have eaten my matzo and haroset, but that would have been about it, and I didn’t want to prepare an entirely different meal for her from what I was feeding everyone else.
Horses and dogs are what you eat when your castle is under siege and it’s the Middle Ages. Otherwise, no.
Well, yeah, but not being constrained by that, nor having learned any of the minhag attached to it, I felt free to let it go, and to discuss only what behavior I actually engaged in.
Preferentially, the ones already felled by enemy arrows, in spite of the laws for kosher slaughter. Better to eat what will otherwise rot, and leave the live ones to be “fresh,” just in case. I mean, they’re already not kosher. You can’t make a non-kosher animal more kosher by letting a shochet slaughter it. He’s not letting his knives near it anyway.
Yes, we discuss these things.
Psssh, what is Hebrew School for, other than quickly finishing your assigned task because you’re Israeli and already speak/read/write Hebrew, then flipping through the books to find the most obscure bits of Jewish lore and Rabinnical speculation? From all the little fiddly bits that go into a sacrifice, to speculation on the identities of various birds listed as “kosher” or “non-kosher”, I’ve read it all!
I’d have a lot of qualms about eating whale, too, outside of a starvation-survival situation. But if were, say, in a village in the high arctic (Alaska, Greenland, whatever) and that’s what was served for dinner by folks legally allowed to take a whale I’d probably try it.
I stopped eating mako sharks because they are now endangered and I don’t feel it to be ethical to eat endangered species even if they are tasty. Likewise, I do not want bluefin tuna because they are being overfished, are now in a vulnerable status and will wind up endangered (if they aren’t already as of writing this) if people don’t stop trying to eat every single one of them.
No.
I’m not sure “freak out” would be the correct description - I’d be furious because that’s awful close to cannibalism, even if the placenta is a disposable organ.
While that’s true of scavengers, most fish we eat are carnivores and a lot are predators but I’m pretty sure you were thinking land animals when you said that.
As someone who has dietary limitations outside of kosher, I have to say a fully kosher household is one of the few places I’d be inclined to trust other peoples’ cooking because those who observe kosher have a good grasp of cross-contamination and the need to look for hidden additions in food.
On the flip side, I’ve read that one reason India is a popular tourist destination for Israelis is that the vegetarians of India understand dietary restrictions, and can give useful answers to kosher Jews looking for stuff they are willing to eat.