Hiya Kiboko --
I hear what you're saying. First of all, let me make it clear that I
love fish (to eat as well as to study/admire). I would gladly fight a grizzly bear for a good salmon steak, and my ethnic background (by nature and nurture) has imprinted me with a fondness for anything fishy and smoked which fits on a bagel with cream cheese -- lox, sturgeon, sable, pickled herring, whitefish salad, etc. -- not to mention that elusive species,
Gefilte brooklynensis.
What I was referring to was Steve-O's comment: "I don't think we need to eat everything simply because it is there or because we can catch it" -- which sounded to me like an indictment against eating fish in general. (Steve-O', please correct me if that isn't what you meant.) The point I was making is that there is a definite advantage to
including fish in one's diet, and not just because it is there and we can catch it.
BTW, many years ago my son had a friend whose parents were Jains of Gujarati (Indian) descent. His mom, Ulka, and I used to hang out together when our kids played, and -- by contrast with some of the more strident Anglo vegetarians -- she
never got preachy or made a big deal about her religion's strict dietary rules, though she followed them faithfully herself. Wherever we went, Ulka found something to eat and didn't allow her vegetarianism to restrict where we took our kids. When we went to McDonald's, for example, she and her son would have french fries and a salad. That doesn't seem like a very balanced meal, but I knew that when they got home she would be making a healthy and delicious Indian vegetarian meal for her family.
The only time Ulka called attention to her diet was once at a Chinese restaurant, where the veggie plate she ordered turned out to have a fried egg on it. In India, Jains do not normally eat eggs, but in India the chickens are often free-range and some of the eggs are fertilized. I explained to her that around here most of the eggs were factory-farmed and thus unlikely to be fertilized, and she accepted that and ate the egg with a clear conscience.
The upshot was that when I was around Ulka I automatically ordered (ovo-lacto) vegetarian food myself. She never lectured me about it, but because she was so sincere in her own faith, I voluntarily did so out of respect for her. (I was also rewarded once with a delicious home-cooked Gujarati lunch at her apartment, which was so good that I commented, "If I could cook that way every day, I'd be a vegetarian too!")
Regarding the price of fish: Oddly, though Noo Yawk is a port city (and Brooklyn's Sheepshead Bay is a legendary haven for fishermen, with numerous seafood restaurants), the culinary gifts of the sea are uniformly expensive here. Some foods more than others -- I seldom have lobster more than once or twice a year. On the other hand, go up along the coast to Plymouth, Massachusetts and seafood is far less pricey. I don't know what the difference is, as the waters are basically the same. That's just the way it is.
Vis-à-vis Steve-O's smoking: Rest assured, I don't go around randomly trying to "save other people from themselves", and I don't complain about smoking unless (a) as you say, they are blowing it in my face; or (b) they are doing so in a clearly-marked non-smoking area. However, when it comes to my friends -- people who mean something to me personally (and I consider my TONMO buddies in that category, even though we haven't met face to face) -- I reserve the right to be a bit of a "Jewish/Catholic Mother" if I feel they're endangering themselves. Once I've given my opinion, however, I don't nag -- it's up to them whether or not they want to listen to my advice. So my lighthearted-but-serious comments to Our Man in New Xenaland are offered out of genuine concern rather than just being a pest.
And yes, I definitely have vices -- they're just hazardous to the arteries (and waistline) rather than the lungs. (Where is that ice cream emoticon now that I need one?
)
=
smoking =
Dieting in the depths,
Tani