I ate a hamburger today

I became a vegetarian because of Billy Crystal.

His movie City Slickers bugged me on many levels, but one thing that drove me crazy was his adoption of that baby calf at the end of the movie. "I bet he sticks that thing in his car and they all stop at McDonalds for burgers and fries on the way home."

I stopped eating meat that night back in 1990, and when I did it, I went whole hog, so to speak.

No meat, no fish, no chicken stock in my soups (yes, I asked at restaurants). I never could give up butter, cheese and eggs, but anything that required an animal to die? No problem.

I joined PETA, listened to Consolidated, stopped wearing leather and volunteered at an animal shelter. I grew to hate, still hate, how animals are raised and killed on factory farms.

But the first thing to creep back into my diet was seafood. God, I missed fish and shrimp and lobster and everything but clams. I rationalized those ocean creatures right onto my plate and into my belly.

I didn't knowingly have any red meat or chicken until 2002, at a Portuguese Festival with friends, when pregnant with Jilly. The craving hit me as soon as I smelled the meat cooking on the outdoor grills. I was overcome and soon found myself inhaling a linguica dog. Heaven.

For the past seven years, I've loosened up a bit more. Unfortunately, the meats I want to eat, the ones I cannot resist, are some of the worst ones for you: bacon and sausages (kielbasa, salami, pepperoni, linguica, bratwurst, sweet italian, hot italian and even liverwurst). I still can't choke down the "healthy meats" like chicken, turkey or even pork.

But, my family eats it all, so I now drive a couple of hours once a month to pick up all grass-fed, natural, living-in-harmony meat from a local farm. I tell people, "this cow had a great life before his throat was slit" with not-a-little irony.

And tonight I ate a hamburger. It was grass-fed, no-hormones-added beef that I grilled myself, but still I know that it was once a living, breathing creature. I paused a couple of times while I chewed and thought about this simple fact.

But, damn, it was good.