I bet the title got your attention huh?
Isn't it great when a friend invites you to dinner? Isn't it even better when they forget to tell you what's for dinner? Isn't it the greatest when you get there and you realize that it's goat? Yum.
I have been a vegetarian for over seven years. Let me clarify, I have been a pesco-lacto-ovo-tarian for over seven years. Which basically means that I'm a wimp of a vegetarian, I eat fish, eggs and milk (try as I might I just can not give up sushi). That being said I do not eat beef, chicken, pork and especially not goat. Being a vegetarian has made me expand my palate. I learned to cook for myself at 13 and have even gotten my 80-year old grandfather to try tofu. But never goat, I had never tried goat. I never even knew that people ate goat - my Polish/English family certainly doesn't make goat-burgers and I'm pretty sure that our meat-loaf doesn't contain any either.
When my friend passively mentioned that we would be eating it, my heart sank just a little bit. Inside my mind I was thinking about the cute little goats I ran up to on the farm only a few days prior and announced my love for. I was thinking how sad they would be if they knew that I was going to eat their sister.
I had a decision to make. I could either state my beliefs of pesco-lacto-ovo-tarianism and deny the goat, or I could jump in with two canines and take a bite. I chose the second.I have always said that were I to go abroad, I would break my pesco-lacto-ovo-tarianism and truly immerse myself within the culture by eating the local foods. I just never thought that going abroad meant going to central New Jersey.
One of the most wonderful things about Rutgers is its diversity. I lived in white-ville my entire life and then went to the University of Vermont, where again everyone blended in to the snow-capped mountains. Sadly, before Rutgers, I could quite literally count the number of non-white people I knew on one hand. Sadder still, I was living in blissful ignorance to all of the wonderful cultures that were just an hour south. Since Rutgers, I have met people from all nationalities - I know someone who moved here from India, another person from Albania and the girl right across the hall from me is here from Kenya and of course with all of these ethnicities, comes all of their food.
I may never get to India, Albania or Kenya but I am sure going to experience their culture while they are willing to share it. If that means that I have to eat some goat meat to do it - well, okay.
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