Jewish people do not eat pork. Pig just does not make the Kosher-cut.
I do not shop for meat. Growing up with a mom whose first job (after picking corn) was working at a vegetarian restaurant did not prepare me well for my assignment to bring the main dish to a recent youth activity at church.
Our group of youth and leaders celebrated Passover together, complete with an abbreviated version of the Seder, and everything was going well until I sneaked off to the kitchen to start cutting the meat in preparation for our dinner. I had seared and braised two beef roasts (visualize: me in front of the google screen typing in "define: sear" and then "define: braise"), and I noticed while carving the meat that one was a little pale. Alarmingly pale. That commercial I had seen the last time I owned a T.V. as a fourth grader came back to my head slowly, as a horse trotting into view with a banner reading, "Pork: the other white meat". CRAP!
I wanted to crawl into a hole with my other white meat, and never face these people again. I had been asked to make my meat dish as kosher as kosher gets. My painstaking effort not to use garlic, leaven, or to mix meat and dairy products flew out the window with the one fact that I had brought pork to a Jewish celebration. Good thing nobody in attendance was Jewish.
So, next time I'm in the store shopping for large bloody masses of meat, I'll give it a good smack on the behind to see if it moos or oinks. Let's just pray it doesn't neigh...
