By DAVID IZRAELEVITZ
Los Alamos

Those of us in long-term romantic partnerships will probably remember distinctly the moment we introduced our new love to our parents. I was a student away from home and I phoned Mom and Dad, let them know about a girl named Terry, and asked when we could visit them. The conversation went something like this: “Hi, I met this girl named Terry and can she come over for the weekend? Before you ask, she is a nice Jewish girl.” I could feel the excitement growing over the phone, perhaps due to the novelty of their son having a romantic life. “Of course!” my Dad exclaimed. “What does she know about Uruguay? Let’s have a real Uruguayan barbecue. I’ll go into the city and get all the right cuts of meat.” “Mom, Dad, she’s a vegetarian…” The excitement of my love life newsflash, with a Jewish girl no less, was starting to deflate. “Vegetarian? No beef, no chicken?” “Just veggies.” Prolonged silence until Mom comes to the rescue.  “We’ll just have side dishes, and we’ll be fine.”

Uruguay, Argentina, and southern Brazil may differ regarding politics, music, or soccer, but they have a common fundamental cultural touchstone, the barbecue or “parrillada.” This tradition entails the systematic autopsy of a cow and the grilling of the resulting muscle groups and internal organs over a hardwood-fueled fire. Eating beefsteak alone is an incomplete experience. You have to enjoy the surrounding fatty tissues, whet your appetite with a well-grilled bit of kidney or small intestine. If you haven’t even tried the blood sausage, you may not get dessert.

To give you a better idea of my pre-college diet, I recently reviewed the cookbook that my mother had brought from Uruguay when we immigrated. It featured six ways to serve a cow’s heart, seven ways to serve tongue, including what to do with the attached thymus gland, five ways to serve brains or liver, four for tripe, and three for kidneys. Broccoli is not mentioned once. This is the cultural milieu I left when I went to college. My parents taught me about handling money, doing laundry, and sewing buttons. Doing without daily meat protein was not a life skill they found beneficial.

Fortunately, while Terry was not interested in eating meat protein, she was not opposed to its presence at the dinner table. I joked that we should go to a steakhouse on a date so I could have the two steaks and she the two salads. Several times she prepared a steak for me, and while I devoured it, she attacked a steamed artichoke. Needless to note, artichoke is also missing from my mother’s cookbook. I didn’t even recognize an artichoke or its Spanish translation until Terry and I met. Artichoke hearts are fine now, but the plated plant still looks extra-terrestrial.

Which brings me to another cookbook, Moosewood. The Moosewood Cookbook was one of the first vegetarian cookbooks published in the late 1970s. No cow hearts or kidneys of course, but it had plenty of artichoke and broccoli recipes. Slowly, in order not to upset my sensitive digestive system, Terry began introducing me to the recipes in this, her favorite cookbook: Broccoli-Cheese Strudel, Polenta Pizza, Black Bean Soup, among other blood-free delicacies.

More than forty years of marriage later, I can no longer eat a manly-sized steak. My stomach’s biome has adjusted to dissolving asparagus, brussels sprouts, and other fibrous plants while the beef-digesting microbes are few and far between. Even my parents changed their diet. My father had triple-bypass surgery in his 50s and discovered that many green substances are edible and even good for you. Still, I try to stay true to my upbringing and have a chile-cheeseburger with moderate frequency.

We went to a restaurant recently. Terry ordered the calabacitas tacos while I ordered the black bean burger. The server misheard and asked me how I wanted it cooked. “The veggie burger, not the real one,” I clarified. My flesh-eating gut microbes sighed in disappointment.