Ethical Marriage: A Year Without Bacon

"Tastes ethical!"

This was my wife's reaction a moment ago as she took a sip of some fair trade hot cocoa that I tracked down at our grocery store. Marriage is weird. Like super, super weird. If you're married you probably already know that. If you're not married it's probably pretty obvious from where you stand. I'm kind of dense, so I'm still very confused by a lot of the strangeness that is marriage. I've written about this type of thing before.

To me the most weird (I need to use that word less) part of marriage is how different two people are and yet how completely their lives and decisions become intertwined. For example, I suddenly can't just go to the grocery store and buy the cheapest of everything because that food isn't just for me and that money isn't just mine. Not only do I have to take my own preferences and thoughts into account with each decision, but also those of another person. And that is why I have not bought bacon for a year.

Let me repeat that for overly dramatic effect. I, Chris Clark, a manly man with hair on my face and chest, have not bought bacon, as in bacon bacon, for 1 whole year, 365 sad days. A year without one of my favorite artery cloggers. A year without the internet's favorite food.

Don't panic. It's okay. I have some bacon now and will be cooking it on Monday. What a relief! But why has it been so long since I had meat candy at my disposal for easy consumption? Simple.
 

So, my wife is what most people refer to as a "good person." I knew this when I married her. Heck, her kindness and passion for social justice were some of the things that I found so attractive. It's not that I'm a bad person, or that I don't also have a passion for social justice, it's mostly just that I really like food and really hate doing hard things.

Jenny and I have been completely switching to fair trade and ethically sourced foods. This is something that, in theory, I am very much in favor of. In college my good friend Gordon and I spent a considerable amount of time attempting to get our school to boycott Coca-Cola due to their many unethical practices, and to this day I avoid Coca-Cola products. But Jenny is taking things a little bit farther than just skipping a few unethical corporations. We're slowly eliminating everything unethical from our pantry and refrigerator.

This has meant largely cutting meat out of our diet, at least when Jenny cooks, as well as switching to fair trade coffee and chocolate. When it comes to fair trade that means I have much more limited options and that I can no longer buy brownie mix for brownies or chocolate chips with which to make cookies. I'm just thanking God that I finally found fair trade hot cocoa or else my life would have a sad lack of chocolate.

But today something beautiful happened. Portland has of the oldest farmers' markets in the nation and, in my opinion, one of the best. It's really great. You can get almost anything and it's all local and mostly organic and ethical and all that good stuff. So my wife, being the great person she is, loves shopping at the farmers market and we now buy our meat exclusively from our local farmers. It's more expensive, but it's nice to know we're not supporting factory farming. Jenny read Eating Animals this past year and has become completely committed to getting our animal products ethically. We mostly only use meat in my lasagna, which is just so good that we can't give it up. So aside from that one dish we've mostly been living a meatless life. Until now.

Today I tagged along to the farmers market. I normally stay at home and play video games (I buy all my games digitally via services such as Steam to avoid the slave labor production of physical discs and boxes. That's my halfhearted attempt to jump on the ethical bandwagon anyway.) But today I went along to pick up a bunch of veggies as well as a pound each of pork and beef. And then I saw it. As my wife bought a large bag of vegetables I wandered over to a cooler with a sign saying "Smokey Bacon." It was so beautiful. Local. Ethically sourced. Bacon. It's everything Jenny loves and everything I love all in one tasty, meaty package.

Now that package is sitting in our fridge waiting for me to eat it. Marital differences can be hard to reconcile, but when opportunities arise where there can be both compromise and bacon it's just too good to pass up.

Change '1962' to 'Hannaford' and '2011' to 'Farmers' Market' and you see why I sometimes struggle with getting ethically sourced food.

Reboot: Starting Fresh

I think it's time for a re-introduction.

Hi there. Nice to meet you. No really, the pleasure is all mine. My name is Chris and, as I'm sure you've guessed, this is my blog. My blog that, for numerous reasons, I have mostly abandoned. Until now. Rather than writing a post which is half apology and half whining about why I couldn't be bothered to keep blogging (which is an embarrassing number of the last 5 years of posts) I figured I should just start fresh. Let's put the last 7 or so years and 593 posts in the past and actually get back to writing.

So, back to that re-introduction. To the right you will notice the question "Who is Chris?" paired with my relatively snarky answer. If you ever forget who I am I would refer you there. In the meantime read this.

Kurt Vonnegut, my writing hero, says that in writing always "Start as close to the end as possible." So I will start as close to the end of this story as I conceivably can. Today. If I could start by telling you about tomorrow, or the real end of my story, the end end, I surely would. But I don't know the end so I can't tell it.

Today is August 21st, 2013. The sky over Portland is utterly clear. From my office window I face South towards Mt. Washington, which lies somewhere in the area where the blue turns into a vague off-white on the horizon. On my desk next to me lie four stacks of Sunday School material and a clipboard with a boardgames inventory on it. I'm a Youth Director as of just over a month ago. It is no exaggeration when I say this is my dream job. Youth Director is a vague job title to most people, even Christians, but it simply means I'm a youth pastor without any aspirations to becoming a fullfledged pastor.

It's easy to understand why I love my job when you break it down into it's core parts.

It's like we like each other or something equally gross

Things I love:
God, my faith, and The Salvation Army
Working with other people who love the above
Working and hanging out with children and youth
Playing games
Storytelling and teaching
Efficiency and organization

Things that are a part of "work":
See above list

Suffice it to say that I am very happy at this point in my life.

Work isn't the only part of my life. I'd be remiss if I were to leave out my wife. In introducing myself I must also mention her since she's sure to be mentioned in my writing a fair amount. My wife's name is Jenny and we were married June 9th, 2012, shortly after graduating together from Houghton College. She's a pretty cool person. She sells stuff on Etsy. I spend most of my time with her and our cat, Sneaky.

So, I mentioned we graduated from Houghton together. We also met there. I guess I should be pretty grateful to Houghton for that. Jenny majored in Intercultural Studies while I doubled in Writing and Psychology. I majored in writing intentionally. Psychology happened by accident when I realized just how few academic credits it took to complete a Writing major.

That brings me to the next point of introduction. I am a self-proclaimed writer. I don't know what people define as being a "writer" these days. Anybody can sit down and pound out some narcissistic blog post (just look at me!) but I think the term implies you're actually good at it. Or make money that way. Or something. So I guess to be fair I'm an "aspiring writer." Due to the low volume and quality of writing I actually produce I often think I'm more of a transpiring writer.

"Wow, you're awfully down on your writing!" you say, "But look at this blog post! This is the best thing I've ever read in my entire life!" Well, it's nice of you to say that. I'm sure it's true. At this point my view of college is that it gave me a wife and a wrecked sense of self-esteem regarding my writing and not much else. I don't have a lot of confidence in my writing at the moment, but I'll get there.

Anyway, I've saved a final piece of introduction for last because it's the least interesting bit. I love video games. I love them so much it hurts sometimes. Hurts my wallet mostly. This morning I woke up and saw that Origin had put Mass Effect 3 on sale. I've been waiting months hoping it would go on sale. So excited. To return to my point, I love video games. I play them a lot. If you also like video games we should play them together. I particularly want someone to play Planetside 2 with. Get in touch with me.

I think it's about time to wrap up this post. Just to jump off that last paragraph, here's a non-sequitur: let's be friends. I've been lamenting the fact that I have very few friends in the Portland area who I really spend time with. If you want to play video games: get in touch. If you want to go get bubble tea: get in touch. If you want to hang out: you get it.

Thanks for reading.

Edit: I'm also mostly inactive on Twitter! Check it out @KuriJaVaba