What? No Christmas posting? Well I was full of good cheer and only narrowly avoided the usual overeating, but the truth of it is that Christmas belongs to the carnivores.
I call myself a semi-vegetarian because I do occasionally eat seafood. The fact of it is, I can go fishing and kill a fish without it weighing too heavily on my conscience (I don't know why - there is a different logic at work), but the few times in my life when I've taken the life of a terrestrial animal for food, it has haunted me. Don't get me wrong, I realise I'm still taking a life; and I do also when I buy a pair of leather shoes, but then I do also take a life when I squash a cockroach or take antibiotics, or eat vegemite (All those poor hundled masses of yeast - Yeast! I'd have to give up beer if I was going to go 'all the way').
"You must think I'm a monster!" gasped Lisa Simpson when, upon revealing her nascent vegetarianism to Apu, hears about his veganism. This choice, for me is about mindfulness rather than puritanism. That is, the simple, daily act of being aware of the consequences of my actions. Compassion allows us to do this and yet not be immobilised by the potentially chaotic (in the butterfly effect sence) consequences of our actions.
If the recipes here feature seafood too often, then it's because they are occasional recipes. When I cook for friends, I like to please, and seafood always has an air of luxury about it (well, not always). When they cook for me, people tend to latch on to this seafood loophole and I tend to accept it with good grace and offer up my prayers, for what they're worth.
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