Nicole Is Cooking

If your answer is yes, today is your lucky day.

On January 27, The New York Times published an article by Mark Bittman called Rethinking the Meat-Guzzler. I have been contemplating mentioning it here but wasn’t sure what to say. I really wanted to focus on this one part of the article:

To put the energy-using demand of meat production into easy-to-understand terms, Gidon Eshel, a geophysicist at the Bard Center, and Pamela A. Martin, an assistant professor of geophysics at the University of Chicago, calculated that if Americans were to reduce meat consumption by just 20 percent it would be as if we all switched from a standard sedan — a Camry, say — to the ultra-efficient Prius.

In the event you missed it before, I am a vegetarian. However, I am also a realist- it isn’t for everyone. I am not going to preach that everyone should be or make you feel bad if you don’t convert- it is your decision. I will make food that looks tasty though which may encourage you one day to cook a vegetarian meal or vegan dessert. You could just as easily throw meat or chicken stock into the meals I show here. You may not even be willing to consider giving up 20% of your meat consumption. But, I am going to make you an offer.

Have you heard of carbon offsetting or emissions trading? If you haven’t, click on the link there. If you want the real quick overview, you give money to a company to do good in the world to offset the carbon/ emissions you contribute to the world for things like air travel. There are no formal standards yet for companies who do this kind of work so it is a bit of a crap shoot on what they are really doing with your money.

Well, according to the statistic from the article (and the whole article is worth reading… Bittman is not vegetarian so there is no hidden propaganda there on my part) my eating habits are the equivalent of 5 Priora on the road. And I am not some nebulous company without formal regulation… I am a fairly ethical person going on 4 years of vegetarian eating.

So here is my offer- I am selling four 20% shares of my eating habits for $200 each (I am keeping the 5th for myself). $200 gets you the right for one year from date of purchase to say that you have carbon offset 20% of your meat consumption. I pledge that I won’t eat meat. How does that sound? Seems like a bargain compared to the price of a Prius.

(Yes, I really am serious. I can invoice you via PayPal and can take credit cards on my PayPal account. Just leave a comment below if you want to talk about it some more. And in the interest of full disclosure- your money will go to buy me more tech toys, most likely an iPhone. Edit: Ok, while I really want an iPhone, that would be bad use of the money. If anyone is really crazy enough to take me up on this because you have some weird sense of guilt over eating meat and won’t actually do something about it, the money will be donated to Clagett Farm. You could of course donate to them yourself and get the tax deduction. Or, maybe join a CSA near you.)

Picture from Wikipedia.