Hamburgers have been a source of conflict in my life. I was raised Hindu and my people generally do not eat beef. When my family moved to America, we moved to Texas of all places, where eating beef is...well, you just do it. So, at age 7, I started eating hamburgers. My favorite hamburger by far was the one made by Ronald McDonald.
On my first trip back to India, my grandfather, horrified to learn I was eating beef, sat me down and gave me this logic: cows give you milk; your mother gives you milk; you wouldn't eat your mother, would you? That made perfect sense to me. And so began years of struggle in my head:
This tastes really good.
Crap.
Can God see me eating this hamburger?
Is God Hindu?
Mmmmm....cheeseburger
Does God care about this issue?
UGH!
This tastes really good.
This is too much pressure for a kid growing up in multiple cultures. To their credit, my parents never pressured me one way or the other. Even my vegetarian father wanted this to be easy in our lives: You want to eat beef? Eat beef.
But still, I would go through periods of time when I ate beef and periods of time when I did not eat beef; each time period fraught with anxiety about whether I was doing the right thing, was I living the fullest life, did I really need to be spending so much freaking time thinking about this?!?!
It wasn't until my pregnancy with my son four years ago that I made peace with hamburgers. With a two-year-old running around and a baby in my belly sucking the life out of me, I had bigger things to think about besides God's displeasure at my eating beef.
This was my logic: I have to survive. I want to be happy. Hamburgers are delicious. And also: Mmmmm....cheeseburger!
The photo at the top is a hamburger filled with blue cheese, fresh off the grill Sunday evening, made by our friend Mike. It. Was. So. Good.
Happy eating all!
