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.