For almost thirty years, I’ve sworn off red meat. I still eat chicken and fish, but I’ve tried to avoid the other stuff. I’m prone to gout, so keeping away from red meat is essential in helping me control it. But beyond that, I have real ethical objections to the way most meat is raised and slaughtered.

Someone will surely point out that eating chicken might take care of the gout thing, but it does nothing to alter the facts surrounding the objectionable way chickens are raised and slaughtered. Kind of hypocritical, isn’t it?

Fine, I’m a bundle of illogical consistencies. Is that what you wanted to hear? Man, y’all are brutal.

Anyway, I went down to Mexico about twenty years ago with a couple of my buddies to the children’s home. We went to church on one particular Sunday, and a short man in dusty cowboy boots and crisply pressed blue jeans approached my uncle Juan to invite all of us over to his house for dinner.

Now, this may come as something of a surprise to you, but going to a stranger’s home for Sunday dinner with people I don’t know isn’t something I spend my time yearning for.

Something else you might not know about me: I’m not typically, what you might call, an “adventurous eater.” I’m kind of picky. I tend to avoid situations where I’ll have to eat stuff I don’t like—which also means that I’m vigilant about knowing what I’m putting in my mouth.

See, I’m pretty sure there are two kinds of people in the world—those who see some new food and say, “Sure, I’ll try it! What is it?” and those who reverse the order and say, “What is that?” before they ever say, “Sure, I’ll try it!”

For better or worse, I take my place with the latter group of rational human beings, completely confounded by the former.

But I’m not an animal. I pasted on a smile and said, “We’d be honored.”

And we were honored. By which I mean they totally honored us.

We arrived at this tiny home, and the family that invited us was so pleased we accepted the invitation. There weren’t enough places to sit in the living room, so they gave us the couch and the extra seat, and the father asked us about who we were, our families, work … you know, the usual social niceties. When I couldn’t understand something, Juan would translate.

Dinner preparations took a while because a couple of the kids had to go to the tienda to buy stuff for lunch.

Apart from the cramped quarters, the scene wasn’t much different from the one played out in countless homes just down the street from here, across town, or on the other side of the country. People gathering after church for Sunday dinner in someone’s home.

But that changed when it came time to sit down for dinner. And when I say, “Sit down for dinner,” I mean, “We sat down for lunch.” Everybody else in the family, except the father, stood around this small kitchen table to serve us … and watch us eat.

There weren’t enough chairs or enough table space to accommodate four of us plus eight family members. But I’ll never forget what happened next. They started bringing out steaming platters of some kind of meat—some fried, some slow-cooked, some in strips, some in cubes. Then they brought out a big plate of corn tortillas, limes, and a bowl of homemade salsa.

Juan, aware of my idiosyncratic eating habits, leaned over and discreetly said, “They probably spent the whole grocery budget on buying this food for you. It’s a big deal. You’d better eat it, or you’ll offend them.”

Well, as I say, I’m not an animal. I’d pretty much figured that out for myself. They went to great expense and a lot of trouble to give us the greatest gift they could. And I knew I was going to break over and eat not only red meat but some kind of meat I wasn’t entirely sure what it was before being asked to eat it.

You should have seen the expectant look on their faces. All these people standing around watching to see how their gift would be received. I’m positive they served us family delicacies, things that the family would only have on very special occasions, so I felt the pressure of the situation. I knew right away I was going to eat this stuff … whatever it was … even if it killed me, or gave me food poisoning, or made me grow a third eye in the middle of my forehead.

So, I took some meat, put it in a tortilla, squeezed a lime, and spooned on some salsa … and I took a bite.