Burgers

I ABSOLUTELY adore barbecue--no, I'll take it further, I love meat. I have been known to wax on and on about how to treat a piece of chicken with love and respect while you season it, before cooking, and to insist that you will only get the best flavour from an experience of mutual respect between you and your food. It was, in fact, this immense appreciation of meat that led me to give it up for six years. I realised, that perhaps its actually limiting to love something too much. Perhaps, when we have something we want too readily, we begin to take it for granted, and treat it too lightly.

Consider this: while I am no stranger to fantastically cooked food--including great cuts of meat cooked to gourmet standards--for the first two years after I gave up meat, I dreamed of Wendy's spicy chicken sandwiches. Why was that? Why had the spicy chicken sandwich become emblematic of my sacrifice, rather than a beautiful fillet steak?

I think there could be a connection between taking food for granted and the popularity of fast food. If we think that we can have a great steak when we have time, we will treat ourselves to a fast food Hamburger to tide us over. Pretty soon, with hectic lives, we may find ourselves more familiar with the Hamburger or chicken burger than we think.