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Whenever I eat shrimp tails, people look at me like I just helped myself to a heaping spoonful from the tub of butter in the middle of the table. If they’re not strangers, and sometimes even if they are, they ask: Did you just eat the tail? I nod. I am chewing. It takes a minute. Few are satisfied with this answer. Most have to follow up with: Why?My stock answer is that crustacean shells are a natural source of glucosamine, a supplement that helps build cartilage and is probably good for the knee whose ACL I tore two years ago.
That satisfies them. The statement is scientifically true, as far as I know. It is not, however, the truth.
The truth is I have always eaten shrimp tails. I am mystified by other people’s reasons for not eating shrimp tails. I imagine it must be one of those texture-based objections, although I don’t interrogate them, because I know from experience how annoying that can be. Plus, I’m still chewing.
I eat shrimp tails because I eat everything: the cartilage off the ends of chicken bones, unpopped kernels at the bottom of the popcorn bag. Husband Joe (lovingly) compares me to a (cute) whale eating krill. I just unhinge my jaw and swim.
I ate everything until recently, that is. This fall, I stopped eating factory farmed meat. Since the earth became my beat, I’ve been reading nonfiction and watching documentaries, visiting farms and eating local and growing some of my own food. But it was one book, Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer – in fact, it was one passage in that book, which for a hot second I thought about reprinting here – that finally gave my superego the ammunition it needed to keep my id in check. But being a responsible citizen of the earth does not come as naturally to me as it does to, say, my big brother, who’s been uncomplainingly vegan for a decade. And the wild animal in me has been on the verge of bloodthirsty revolt every day since.
I still eat “happy animals” that grazed on pasture while they lived, but that’s not the kind of meat that’s served at the average barbecue, and you can’t find it at the grocery store near me. Even most fish are off-limits in the happy animals diet, because of all the bystander fish, known as bycatch, that are inadvertently killed in the process of harvesting.
Knowing what I now knew and couldn’t very well un-know, the happy animals diet seemed like the responsible choice. The only problem was that it was proving unsustainable. As soon as my superego let down its guard, my id would blatantly disobey this new code of conduct. I’d get drunk and find myself polishing off chicken wings.
The day after Thanksgiving I hit on a compromise. I was in a friend’s kitchen, watching him wash dishes and considering helping. A turkey carcass with plenty of dark meat still on it was marinating in a tray of its own juice, which had pomegranates and mangoes floating around in it. He was going to throw it away. What a tragic denouement to that ShopRite turkey’s unhappy life. This I could help with. I sat at the island in the middle of the kitchen and worked that turkey until it was picked clean. I felt grateful. And just plain full. The wild animal in me had been sated.
I’d figured out how to toe the line between living responsibly and savoring life’s gravy. It was possible to be a conscientious philistine. The combination of eating happy animals and eating meat that would otherwise be thrown away might necessitate a bit of patience, but in the end, very little self abnegation. People are constantly throwing food away for silly reasons.
Which brings us back to shrimp tails. Platefuls of those crunchy delights are always headed for the trash, which makes them a mainstay of the conscientious philistine’s diet. Excuse my reach.
What? Oh, they’re a natural source of glucosamine.
Becca Tucker, editor
It’s been over a year now since I said it. My head was deep in a bag of clothes from a Goodwill in Colorado Springs. I had just scored gray wool slacks, pink striped disco pants, two sweaters, a long paisley skirt and pea green corduroys for under $20.
“I’m never buying new clothes again,” I proclaimed, rifl ing through my booty. It took a few seconds for the words to sink in. Then there they hung, irretrievable.
Life is long. Two of my great-grandmothers lived to 103. The next three quarters of a century would see me progress through increasingly threadbare states, deteriorating eventually into skin and bones wrapped in a potato sack.
I started tacking on asterisks. I could still buy *shoes. *Socks. *Underwear. *Team gear (I play ultimate Frisbee, and need to wear my team jersey and shorts). *Other people could buy clothes for me (the holidays were coming up and I didn’t want to be a scrooge). *I could buy clothes for other people (ditto on the rationale).
It wasn’t as if husband Joe, the sole witness to my proclamation, was paying any attention. I could have kept gabbing and no one would have been the wiser.
Except I couldn’t. This was before Dirt was born, before buying coffee in a throwaway cup cast a shadow over my morning, but I was beginning to feel queasy about certain things. Those clothes from H&M and Forever 21, for instance, were too cheap. Something seemed amiss about going on a shopping binge on a whim, tossing the clothes when the seams gave way six months later, and doing it again.
I had double dog dared myself, and I couldn’t back down. It felt not only doable, but necessary.
I’m not going to pretend life after new clothes has been all peaches and puppies. There have been mornings since that fateful day when I’ve torn all the clothes out of my drawers in a frantic search for something to wear to work, making a mess and making myself late and hating every piece of clothing I own. There have been days I’ve felt like a schlub, or like I’m Amish, or 15 years old, or 70, or egregiously out of synch with the place and time in a way I couldn’t quite pin down. Then again, there were days like that before I stopped buying new clothes, too. Fashion has never been my forte.
But I haven’t slipped up yet. There are the obvious benefi ts to no new clothes, like a few hundred dollars saved per year, feeling a little less like a slave to the man, and not having to spend time in shopping centers, which kind of depress me.
Ironically, I may also be better dressed now. I take it all, hand-me-ups, -downs and -overs, and people are starting to know that. When my friend and her shopaholic little sister were moving out of their Brooklyn apartment, I stoppped by for a farewell hangout session. What should I fi nd but bags upon garbage bags fi lled with designer clothes, headed for the Salvation Army? On any given day there’s a 50/50 shot I’m wearing some item from those sisters (sorry Salvation Army). When people compliment my outfi t, I give credit where it’s due, and my reputation as a clothes bin grows.
When another friend was moving from Sleepy Hollow to Brooklyn, she dumped all the clothes she couldn’t take – dresses, cozy hooded long-sleeves, Captain Morgan PJ pants, a knee brace? – at my house.
To get rid of the stuff that didn’t fi t, either on my body or in my drawers, I organized a clothing swap. Five friends brought their old clothes to trade, we pranced around, and I emerged with a new wardrobe.
I’m partial to my wardrobe, partly because it’s an eclectic mishmash of styles that is in itself a sort of style, but mostly because on any given day I can look down and, starting at my shoes and working my way up, tick off a list of friends, cousins, and thrift stores I’ve visited on various travels. Some of those friends I see all the time. Some are long gone. One moved to California and had a baby girl. I think about her whenever I wear her African skirt with the hole in the right pocket.
Becca Tucker, editor
I moved from the city to an acre in the suburbs four years ago and dug a little garden. The garden is little; the amount of sweat that has poured off me in that garden is substantial.
I situated the garden under a massive oak tree so it wouldn’t interfere with Frisbee tossing on the grass. I hadn’t foreseen that this corner wouldn’t get any sun once the oak tree got its leaves. Oops. Well, my thimble-sized carrots were the sweetest you ever tasted.
Year two: I went to town with my hoe on a plot twice the size of the original one, in a sunnier location, although the whole yard is pretty well shaded. I got a call from husband Joe upon his return home. “I didn’t know you were going to rip up half the yard.” I hung up. He called back. His suburban mentality had been surprised, that was all. Hell, he said, farm the whole yard! That was more like it.
This yield was only slightly better than last. It included balls of corn containing 10 kernels apiece; more thimble-sized carrots – purple this time; and tomato plants with yellow flowers but still no fruit by the fall frost. Dead-set on getting a tomato, I dug up one tomato plant, transplanted it into a giant pot, and lugged it to our bedroom, where it commanded a view of the driveway out a south-facing window. I took down the blind so the plant would get the maximum available sun.
“If this doesn’t work,” mocked Joe, “we’ll get the tomato a hotel room.” He was probably irritable from getting up with the sun, since without the blind, we couldn’t sleep past 6am.
Our sacrifice was not in vain. In February, my winter tomato stunned naysayers with a single ruby red fruit.
After it had given birth and just before the plant gave its last gasp, I took cuttings. They survived. Now I could get a head start by planting juvenile tomato plants in the spring instead of seedlings. Who says you can’t pull one over on Mother Nature?
Since then, my yard’s productivity – while still paltry – has skyrocketed in comparison to year one. Partly, that’s because I’ve picked up gardening tricks like 1) Use raised beds full of soil from under the leaf pile and 2) The aforementioned tomato head start program. The combination has produced a tomato jungle that towers over the rest of my garden.
But there’s another reason for the increased output, and it’s kind of embarrassing. Last summer, I transplanted a wild raspberry cutting. Days later, I checked on it. The cutting had withered, but that overgrown thorny heap devouring the fence? Those reddish canes resembled the raspberry bush I’d been coveting. On closer look…
Yep, here I was working myself to the bone to grow mouthfuls, losing a winter’s worth of quality sleep for one undersized tomato, when a walk around the yard would have uncovered a berry cornucopia.
In case I hadn’t gotten the point (pick your head up, look around!), nature recently offered me another gentle proof of her gardening superiority. I was admiring my tomato jungle by moonlight. Weeding in the dark is dicey, and there was nothing else to be done, so I wandered aimlessly. My perambulations led me to a gnarled tree I’d never thought of as anything but third base in Wiffle Ball. There at eye level, 20 paces from my garden, glowed a small green globe. I took a bite. Not a crab apple. It was a crunchy, delicious apple without a single wormhole. There were a dozen of them. It only took me four years to notice.
– Becca Tucker
Because absurdity loves company, here are the outtakes from my trek down the Hudson.
Day 2: I’m in a post-prandial stupor, watching my twig fire die. Suddenly an unwelcome thought intrudes. It was low tide when I entered Wappinger Creek. How high, exactly, is high tide?
I turn on my headlamp, which turns out to be pointless since I tumble down the embankment anyway, my flip-flops like banana peels on the dry leaves. My kayak is not behind the tree trunk where I left it. She is bathing in moonlight 20 feet offshore, retreating slowly. An hour later I would have been up a creek without a kayak — or a feature story.
I strip down to underwear and escort my boat back to shore. But she’s too heavy to drag up the embankment in my slippery flip-flops. I gather my strength and heave the stern onto a tree trunk that curves over the creek, then hoist the bow so it sits on a sapling.
This spots looks okay, but the tide will rise all night. I need a safety net. A hairy rope of poison ivy dangles, tempting as the forbidden fruit. My sleeping bag is singing its siren song. The vine is evil, but convenient. I tie the loop on the boat’s nose to the vine. Yes, I would pay for this with itchy wrists, but not until tomorrow.
Day 3: I beach at an overgrown brickyard near the Newburgh-Beacon Bridge and make a fire to heat up coffee and Trader Joe’s Indian food in a foil pouch (best camping food ever). My shoes got wet in a sloppy launch this morning, so I arrange my socks on sticks and shoes on bricks around the outside of the fire, unroll my sleeping bag and snooze.
The smell of burning rubber opens my eyes. My shoe is on fire. I bang it on the ground but it’s seriously aflame. I chuck it into the river. Now I have one toasty Converse, one wet half Converse held together with extra tent string, and a million-dollar idea.
Introducing the half-shoe: all the benefits of a sole and the breathability of barefoot.
Day 4: Returning from an exploration of Storm King Cove, a hissing sound stops me in my tracks. A very long, very black snake is sunning himself two feet away, directly between me and my gear. I’m scared to death of snakes. Instinct says screw your stuff, sprint to your boat and paddle like a madwoman. Intellect counters that would be a) littering, b) expensive and c) embarrassing to explain later.
The snake slithers uphill and disappears behind one of the foam blocks that adorn this river’s banks. I can’t see over the ridge so I don’t know where he ended up, which doesn’t do much for my peace of mind. I trace a wide circle to where my stuff is strewn, uttering my brand new mantra, “be cool,” which is directed both at myself and the snake.
With a long stick, I drag a bag toward me. His head pops up from under it, turning my adrenal glands into fire hydrants, and his, too, apparently, because he slithers away so fast that I can’t help wonder who would win in a foot race.
I force myself to work like a scrupulous, if primitive, TSA agent, opening each bag with my stick, examining it, and methodically packing everything in its place. I spend the rest of the morning bobbing around the cove (staying far clear of shore, just in case), feet dangling in the water, basking in self-satisfaction at having overcome my snake phobia.
A fish jumps, and I scream bloody murder. – Becca Tucker, editor
I have to come clean. My car runs on regular old regular unleaded. I eat meat. My carbon footprint just isn’t as petite as I’d like it to be – yet.
That’s not to say I haven’t made some attempts. Like last summer, I saved old bathwater to water my vegetables. Aside from the splashing that saturated every rug while I carried water from bathroom to garden, a smelly yellow film developed after the water had been in the tub for a week. Failure.
I got a jolt of inspiration after watching the documentary “No Impact Man.” For a year, a writer and his family make no garbage, use no electricity, eat only local food, yadda yadda. The credits rolled and left me giddy. I scoffed at my husband, who seemed unenthused. Clearly some of us didn’t care, I announced, but I was going to make a few changes.
Day zero? I’d expected “No Impact Week” to start at the beginning of the work week, and here I was getting an email on Sunday. Dutifully if resentfully, I found an old Chinese food container, a plastic fork and coffee thermos. This would be my mess kit for the week. I fished out a brown paper bag to use as my personal garbage bag, in case I slipped up and created any garbage.
Next morning, I brought my mess kit to Dunkin Donuts. “I’m doing this thing this week,” I said, “where I’m not making any garbage.” The woman buttering my bagel didn’t seem to understand. “No basura,” I said. She said, yeah, I get it, but how should I give it to you? I held out my Chinese food container and she put in my buttered bagel.
Lunch brought my first slip-up. Reciting my line from that morning, I handed the barista my Chinese food container, now full of poppy seeds, and she scooped in couscous and yams. But as I was fishing money out of my wallet, she slapped napkins and a plastic fork onto my tray. Once napkins are on your tray, they’re kind of yours. I stowed the napkins as future tissues, and the fork in case mine broke.
At day’s end, I brought home the garbage I’d made – a wrapper from vending machine nuts, a plastic pod from the office coffee machine. I could eliminate this trash by bringing a snack to work, and maybe getting a French press to make coffee at the office. Totally doable, I thought, and felt good.
It was all downhill from there. On transportation day, I carpooled to work with a co-worker who commutes from the city, and after work, I rode back to the city with her. Wandering alone in the disposable kingdom, I might as well have been an alcoholic at a bar, telling myself I’d drink ginger ale. I was hungry, tired, and carrying three bags – work bag, gym bag, trash bag – on and off subways, bumping pedestrians. I squeezed my bulk into a corner Starbucks and ordered a chicken sandwich on focaccia packaged in cardboard and plastic (garbage!). I went to a drug store and bought a toothbrush (garbage) because I was spending the night at a friend’s. I went to a yoga class, where they forced a name tag on me (garbage).
Back on the street, I dumped all my garbage into a garbage can – including a banana peel, which normally I’d compost. Instead of that annoying third bag, I now had my self loathing to lug around, which at least didn’t bash other pedestrians.
Post-relapse, I ask husband Joe whether we learned anything from that godforsaken experiment. He holds up a cloth napkin. “No paper?”
Baby steps.
Becca Tucker, editor
dirt 