Dear Family, Please Don't Be Shocked

For those of you who know me well I highly recommend that you take a seat and a deep breath before reading this.

For those of you who know me, but not necessarily all of my strange habits, you may or may not understand the enormity of what I am about to say.

For those of you who have merely stumbled across this blog, this probably won't make any sense, feel free to read anyways...

Something beyond words, explanation, and comprehension occurred tonight.  I really don't understand how it happened, or what came over me.  Even now I am trying to decide if it was the right decision or if I should have left it all well enough alone.

But perhaps I should elaborate... 

It all transpired over dinner.  Walking in I already knew what would await me.  6 chairs seated around an oval table with banana woven placemats, plastic cups filled with ice water and an empty white plate laid out with care for each of us.  Amazingly Normal.  But there, amongst all the familiar they stood.  Little round puffs of bread with menacing pieces of brown meat protruding from all sides.  We were having HAMBURGERS for dinner!  Of all the meals I could have dreamed up, this was only trumped for scariness by the meatloaf we had partaken of a few meals earlier (Helen, I am sure you would have loved both meals, you just know my aversion to all things beefy).  

You see, for as long as I can remember, I have refused to eat beef.  I was told that as a small child I stopped eating the stuff sometime between age two and four, caving only occasionally to my dad's homemade burgers during that time.  From then on, I was a white-meat girl only.  In fact, my color distinctions between proteins seemed to swim over to my fishy friends as well, as I refused to eat salmon, the "pink" fish.  

Yes, I know I am strange, but its what makes me so loveable!

Growing up in an Irish meat and potatoes family, I liked neither (but potatoes will have to be a different story), making meal times an interesting experience.  However, I never let it phase me and I continued in my persistence against meat, at times completely forgetting why I didn't eat the stuff, but adamantly knowing that I didn't like it.  

My beef history as memory serves...

- stopped eating the stuff sometime between age 2 and 4

-The Spring of 2001 on the 14th of April I ate beef while in Mexico, partly because I couldn't make out if it was pork or beef and mostly because I was eating with my host family and didn't want to be rude.  Taking one bite, I instantly knew it was beef and that I didn't like it.  

- one day after going through a Taco Time drive through where they mistakenly gave me ground beef instead of chicken.  

- (not beef, but close) July of 2005 I ate lamb for what is most likely the first time ever in South Africa, it then made the migration from banned to approved protein products.

- June 2008, upon entering Morocco and more specifically Africa as a whole I began to adapt a new policy with food, "Don't ask, don't want to know." There are purely times where it is better not to know what is on your plate or what you must eat with a small and a prayer (whole fish, with heads in Uganda - case in point!).  Meaning, that beef has been making scattered appearances, this does NOT mean I have converted to liking it, but my tolerance is higher.

- 3 October 2008 - A Day which will live in Infamy! ... the day Christina ate a hamburger

Please note, that while I did indeed manage to eat a hamburger, this does not mean I have converted.  Nor was I all that thrilled.  If I had to, yes, I would eat one again.  However, I would not go searching for one, I have no desire to eat another one, nor would I pay for it.  

The hamburger is still low man on the totem pole in my book of food preferences, but at least he has finally made his way back onto it. 

So there you have it, alert the media, print and save this article, this truly is a history moment!