I Quit Being a Vegetarian for a Trip to France — Bastille Day

It started with a tweet. Kate Hill, who ran Kitchen at Camont in Gascony, was taking applicants for a culinary writing residency at her 300-year-old farmhouse retreat in rural southwest France. She wanted someone to come stay in a little blue room, join in Camp Confit, and write their heart out. Sitting in my dim, windowless office where I worked on websites all day, something clicked in my mind. I had to do this.

The only problem was that I was a vegetarian. I'd slashed most meat from my diet after reading The Jungle in high school. This residency required that I had to go learn all about ducks. I had never had duck. I hadn't had meat in eight years. But I'd recently read Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle and was questioning why I'd eat tofu flown across the world but not beef from cattle raised on pastures in my own Kentucky home.

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