"The Meat of the Issue"

I wrote the following essay when I was studying abroad in France two summers ago. Apparently, a mere six weeks without red meat was more than I could handle; instead of penning nonfiction prose about the wildflowers in the French Alps, I wrote a diatribe about my yearning for a juicy steak."The Meat of the Issue"

Rousseau was on to something when he wrote about the passions of savage man. As Professor Sullivan outlined the representation of hunting in the state of nature, my carnivorous instinct made itself apparent. Doodling in the margins of my Poli Sci notebook, I sketched a T-bone on a silver platter, a parsley sprig, a knife and fork, a double-hamburger surrounded by 22 hearts, and the phrases “J’aime bien le bifteck,” “I miss steak,” and “Meat...I love you.”

More than friends, family, cell phones, Internet access, or Dunkin Donuts, the aspect of American life I miss most is red meat. For the past month, I’ve suffered from severe beef withdrawal. “Please grill me a steak and FedEx it to France,” I half-jokingly jot as the conclusion to all my e-mails. Omahasteaks.com has quickly become my favorite form of pornography.

France is a land full of ridiculously thin people who love their salted and cured meats. I adore ham as much as anyone else, but the extent to which the French consume it is outrageous; they might as well sprinkle it on their cereal. I’m convinced their national food pyramid has a separate category for pork derivatives. A former prosciutto-lover, if I see another rosette or jambon or saucisson, I’ll slaughter a pig myself, Wilbur be damned. Beef is my antidote to a life of porcine crime. I’ll risk Mad Cow Disease if it means my belly is happy. One night, I stared down at my dinner plate to see a lone artichoke head glaring back at me. Bon appétit indeed. My heart pangs for Morton’s and palpitates at the thought of slabs of quasi-mooing cow.

I phoned my mom to complain about my protein deprivation. “Haha, I’m grilling Delmonicos as we speak,” she retorted, ever the wit. “Your dad went to Ruth’s Chris Steak House on Friday and ate a 60 oz. Porterhouse. Do you know how many pounds of meat that is?!” My friend called to describe in minute detail the feast at his sister’s wedding rehearsal dinner. Filet mignon, lobster, steamed clams, and, how dare he say it, ribs, filled out the menu. I icily reminded him that my host family just served me boudin Lyonnais: pig blood pudding. Chowing down on a piglet’s sanguinary kidneys, interspersed with flakes of uterus and the occasional whisker, is not my definition of a good time.

Desperate times call for desperate measures. I organized a group excursion to an establishment dubiously named “Bora Bora Restaurant” because Gabriella, our program’s Executive Director, raved about its American-style hamburgers. Never a fan of McDonald’s, I found myself making pilgrimages to Quick Hamburger Restaurant to supplement my jambon-on-buttery-baguette lunches. Bacon-flavored snack crisps vie for prime shelf-space at the Huit à Huit in Talloires, yet American-style bacon is nowhere to be found. Instead, questionable circles of mauve-colored pork peek out from my weekly indulgence, the Maxi Bacon Burger.

My host family left for Marseilles one weekend, indicating that, in the interim, I could feast on three containers of ramen noodles and two cans of tuna salad “Americana” with boiled corn. Instead of coal, they had stuffed my stocking with sodium. Livid, I stalked the cobblestone streets of Annecy, credit card in hand, in search of beefy satisfaction. I sadly learned that the traditional French cut, Parisian entrecôte, doesn’t do justice to the steak family. Pounded thin with an angry patch of congealed fat running through the center, entrecôte is rough and stringy. Like Clara in the classic Wendy’s ads, I wanted to shriek, “Où est le boeuf?”

Upon arriving in Paris, my friends and I raced to the first restaurant with the word viande emblazoned on its awning. Saliva pooled on the menus as we greedily translated the phrases steak au poivre, coeur de rumsteak, and tournedos de boeuf. Masticated chunks of filet de boeuf never tasted so good. Notre-Dame, Sacre-Coeur, Sainte Chappelle—the great Parisian churches were beautiful, but my religious experience that weekend involved a knife and a fork.

Every day, the Crolard bus passes a pen of pygmy brown sheep. Without fail, Hillary, my usual seatmate, coos, “Ooooh! Look at da baby sheepies! I want to play with them!” I peer down and think, yes, those would look nice. If they were prepared medium-rare with a nice Béarnaise sauce.