I enjoy a nice, juicy burger now and then. No, I do not believe that people need to be vegetarian or vegan in order to be “pure” or to be “enlightened.” That is dogmatic hogwash. I am far ahead of most people I know in that regard, and I eat meat and I enjoy it, and I need it for my rare blood condition. So, let’s just lay that ridiculous argument to rest here and now.
So as I was saying, I like a juicy burger now and then. Since being diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, I eat them less frequently than ever before because I don’t want to completely give up having a burger on a bun, and the buns are something that are not good for a diabetic. So it is rare that I have one. But I enjoy it when I do.
I find it hilarious how, when ordering one, or even when eating one with a friend, people will get a very curious look on their faces when I say, “Hold the lettuce.” To them, it is what makes a burger a burger, or so it would seem. I am sorry to have to inform you, but the MEAT is what makes a burger a burger for me, not the vegetation that people are guilted into including with the meat.
If I want lettuce, I would like to have it on the side as part of a salad. I enjoy lettuce that way. And I will often opt for the salad instead of fries and such. But please keep that crap off my burger! You see, it is both a function thing and a texture thing. On the texture front, lettuce on a burger becomes wet and slimy. I do not like that at all. A tomato is already wet and slimy, but I like my lettuce to be crisp and dry. On the functional front, once the lettuce warms up from the heat of the burger it gets that wet and slimy aspect to its very being. That leads to it becoming like lubrication for the burger to use to slip right out of the bun. I do not like my burgers to be overly messy. So this type of dysfunction on a burger just makes me frustrated. I want to be able to enjoy it and not wrestle with the damn thing just to get it from the plate to my mouth. If I truly wanted to go hunting, I would have hunted the animal the burger came from. But once it is dead and on my plate I believe the hunting aspect of the entire scenario should be done and over with and that I should be able to just enjoy my burger in peace.
When I went off of bread for my diet, I sincerely tried to do the lettuce wrap on burgers and hot dogs. It was a f@#%ing disaster! I hated every single second of it. So I decided to just not have the bun at all, and not be ridiculous enough to try to substitute said bun with stupid lettuce. That lasted for months. And although I do not eat a lot of bread anymore, I finally decided that life was just too goddam short to not enjoy a flipping burger when I finally get to have one. I have never wanted food to be an issue for me. Some days I find that I just don’t have an appetite for anything at all because food is, frankly, getting boring with this diet that has been forced upon me. So when I have a burger, WITHOUT THE STUPID LETTUCE, you can be sure that if anyone tries to come between me and it, they will soon learn that, although I did not hunt down the animal I am now consuming, I have wicked mad skills when it comes to maiming and killing things.
So lettuce consider (did you get that pun?) why anyone would ever have thought about putting lettuce on a burger…just for a moment. I promise, this won’t take long.
I can envision some mother of a three year old being guilted by a doctor or by a mother-in-law or by her own mother that her child is not eating enough vegetables. We all know that a balanced diet is important, so said mother likely decided that, because little Johny was absolutely NOT going to eat salad and it would just end up on the floor, she would hide the salad inside his burger on a bun. This likely worked moderately well and fairly consistently…at least until Johny grew old enough to know that he actually had the choice to remove that unwanted weed from his burger. But in the meantime, mama has shared this discovery with all the other preschool moms and VOILA! Lettuce becomes a staple to every burger.
Or…some dude made the burger patties so spicey that it made a little kid cry, so he decided that because carbs cool off the palate, he should institute carbs right into the burger and put lettuce on it for the sake of not burning off the face of the children eating the burger. And, after all, if it is “for the children” you can be damned sure that is going to catch on!
But a more likely scenario is that Bubba was sick and tired of Elli-Mae lecturing him about how he needed to eat more salads for the fibre. So as a way of appeasing her he threw a bunch of lettuce on his burger and said, “There, now, Elli-Mae, I am eating a goddam salad. Now could you leave me the hell alone?!” and then chugged an entire bottle of beer to wash that lettuce down, let out a huge belch, and admired what was left of his teeth in the side mirror of his pick up truck.
I know…these are not likely the reasons why lettuce ended up foolishly being placed onto a burger. But any one of them COULD be, which means that perhaps on some other dimension of reality, this is actually what happened…and if it could actually happen in another dimension of reality, then who is to say that it did not happen in THIS dimension of reality?
Now, you may be wondering what any of this has to do with shamanic teachings, shamanism, spirituality, and all that stuff about which I was born to talk and write. Well, get ready, because here comes the BOMB!
- You do not need to have any particular diet to become enlightened. Sure, it might help, but that is not the be-all and end-all of enlightenment. And anyone who thinks it is can be identified as a “pretender.”
- Diet can actually assist your well-being, just like my paleo diet is helping me with my diabetic stuff.
- Do your best to never substitute the real thing with a fake thing. This includes stuff like garden burgers and tofu burgers. The fact is that tofu is actually more toxic than red meat. And garden burgers are alright, as long as they don’t have tofu mixed in with them.
- Know what you want, and ask for what you want, or you will never get what it is you want. So if I want a garden burger, that is what I will ask for. If I want a beef burger (much more likely) then that is what I will ask for. And VOILA! That is what I get.
- Never question someone else’s tastes or choices in food. That is downright rude. And it makes you come across as a dietary Nazi.
- Never get between a hungry shaman and his food. Not philosophically, not spiritually, and certainly not physically. That will not end well for you.
- At any given moment in life, with any circumstance, there are always at least 3 contributing factors to what has made something develop, and that is why I presented 3 possible scenarios for you to consider on the topic of the origins of lettuce being placed on a beef burger. All of them could be true, none of them could be true, and any one of them could be true. The responsibility to research the possibilities always rests upon whomever actually wants to know. I, personally, would prefer to not know the specific details, as they would then lead me to finding out who is responsible for this horrid practice and then I would be forced to hide their body in the forest somewhere. Just kidding. Or am I?
So there you have it. The reason that lettuce is the bane of every burger is now knowledge that you will not be able to not have. You are welcome!