The Carbonara Game

I haven’t mentioned meat in any of my posts yet, and there’s a reason for that: I’m deeply ambivalent about eating animals, for a host of reasons—environmental, ethical, and cholesterol. The environmental considerations are the ones that weigh most heavily on me. According to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization, meat and dairy production is responsible for 14.5% of greenhouse gas emissions. It’s been estimated that a fully vegan diet results in half as much greenhouse gas emissions as a typical diet that includes animal products.

This past weekend, Olivia, who made an appearance in last week’s blog post, helped me create a budget for my finances. We played around with a spreadsheet and saw what kind of things I could afford, what would fit into the budget, and what wouldn’t. I learned a lot from the process. If humanity were to sit down with Olivia to create a carbon budget, we would learn a lot, too. We would find that we can’t afford to eat animal products much anymore.

Still, I find it hard to eliminate animal products from my diet. But I try. I call myself a lessetarian: I try to eat less animal-based food, less than I used to, and less and less with each passing year. I grew up eating a good deal of meat, of all kinds, but a few years ago, I started reducing the amount of red meat I ate. Now I’m committed to no longer eating it at all and I plan to gradually reduce the kinds and amount of animal products I eat, perhaps to the point of total veganism, but likely a bit short of that.

Many vegan-minded people I know say that they “never liked meat much anyway.” I love the taste of meat, and yet I’ve been surprised by how little I miss it. The absence of red meat just isn’t that present to me.

But there is a significant exception: Spaghetti Carbonara.

That I do miss, pine for, really, because, to me, a bowl of carbonara is a bowl of magic. It’s like a living being, an organic system in dynamic flux: the egg cooking as it mixes with the hot pasta, a chemical reaction as the fat from the bacon emulsifies with the egg and the pasta water. The hot pasta whips around as I twirl my fork, the silky, vital sauce, rich yet delicate, clinging to it.

The last time I ate carbonara—which very well could be the last time I eat carbonara—was in January. My roommate Eliza made coq au vin for New Year’s Eve and so we entered the new year with half a package of bacon in the freezer. We could have just kept it on the front porch, because our winter was savagely cold, the temperature remaining below freezing for days at a time.

One week when it was particularly cold out, two days in a row, I woke up way too early. I lay in bed frustrated by the chronic insomnia that dogs me. By the sky-high gas prices that had blown up my budget. By the grinding search for a job that would pay me enough to alleviate my worry about the utility bill. By the brutal cold barging in through my apartment’s windows.

I gave up on getting back to sleep around 5:00 a.m. I pulled on my warmest hat and took a blanket I’d bought in the San Francisco Airport a few months before the pandemic began and wrapped it like a high-waisted skirt. Thinking about what would make me feel better, I headed into the kitchen, turned on the overhead light, and started making carbonara.

By the time I was done, the sun was just coming up. I sat on the couch in my living room with its east- and south-facing windows, sun streaming through the insulating film stretched across them, holding a big, deep bowl of the pasta I’d made. I felt a whole ecosystem of emotion vibrate around me: the slithering frustrations remained, and they were joined by fragments of guilt at eating bacon and such a high-cholesterol meal stalking across my mind. But a gentling triumph at successfully making the carbonara was there, too, along with a fierce glee at stealing for myself a moment of immersive, glowing indulgence.