At an Indonesian restaurant last Friday, I asked my date what he recommended — He’d been there before, I hadn’t. He suggested ordering a couple dishes to share — and immediately, I rebuffed both his picks.

You know, cuz they had chicken in them. I’m not a big fan of eating these feathered friends, mainly because the thought of hormone-fed, antibiotics-packed flesh grosses me out, but also cuz I met such nice chickens during my last NoCal visit. What if I end up eating the funny looking one with the white feather ‘fro?

I don’t eat red meat or pork either — due to the above issues, plus unresolved mad cow fears, plus everything I read in Fast Food Nation. I do, however, eat seafood. I simply can’t give up sushi.

Now I know we have fishing-related environmental issues in the world — and that lots of fish end up ingesting antibiotics too. Umbra wrote about this a few years back — and things haven’t changed significantly, as far as I can tell.

So what to do? On the Audobon website, I checked out the Seafood Lover’s Guide, complete with a PDF Seafood Wallet Card detailing what fish to enjoy, be careful of, or avoid.

So detailed, in fact, that I found this fishy list rather daunting. Which is why I cut off everything except the “Avoid” section. I figure I can just start by excising the unlucky 13 on that list from my diet. It won’t be hard — it’s not like I ever ate monkfish or shark anyway. And no tuna — prolly my fave fish — is on the list, except for bluefin, which I can’t afford, really.

And I even glued the lil list on to the clothing tag to my moreTrees tank, to make the wallet card more durable.

Back to Friday: we ended up getting a shrimp dish and a tofu dish. I didn’t have my handy card yet, so I’m not sure whether or not the shrimp was imported. But if it were, I’d have liked to just order my tofu delight without going into a long explanation about why I’d rather not get the shrimp dish even though I eat seafood.

He was a very nice, understanding boy. I just like ordering my own food –

Filed in: fish sushi seafood date vegetarian

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