Preface Babies'' cheeks are delicious. We nibble and kiss. We say, "I''m going to eat you up," in a growly, hungry voice. Think of all the food that went into making that baby. How much butter the pregnant woman ate. How many leafy greens with that folic acid. Would the baby taste like Swiss Chard? It''s a daunting choice--deciding to have kids. When I was growing up, my mom was an establishing member of the Zero Population Growth society.

In the doctor''s office, at the mall, in the grocery store, whenever we saw a family of eight kids, the eldest daughter managing the little kids, she would loud-whisper, "The planet cannot take so many humans." In a state where women marry youngest and have babies right soon after, having kids isn''t a decision. It''s an expectation. To be in Utah is to be pregnant, so I left for Oregon to attend college ASAP. After leaving Salt Lake for even-more-progress-than-my-mom city of Portland, no one was having kids any time soon. In Portland, it was well established that there were already too many people on the earth. Every house had a Diet for a Small Planet cookbook on the countertops next to the homegrown bean sprouts. In Portland, it was a given that food choices were political.

Even in the late nineties, liberal Portlanders knew that eating red meat harmed the environment. On my not-so-ecofriendly Isuzu Rodeo, I stuck a sticker to my bumper that read "Cows Kill Salmon" because of the way grazing cows trotted through small creeks, turning spawning grounds into muddy, grazeable, land even though I, occasionally, ate burgers at McMenamins. Growing up in Salt Lake City, I was a picky eater, but after Portland''s mind-opening ways, now I eat, and make, almost anything. I love to cook. Souffles and beef roulade, cassoulet and lengua tacos. I love sauces: gravy, bearnaise, buerre blanc, bechamel, raspberry jam compote, and beef broth reduction. I blow through a pound of butter on a regular dinner party night and three pounds for Thanksgiving. Fish! I love branzino, sea bass, trout, salmon, chicken thighs without skin, chicken thighs with.

I love turkey and I love filet mignon. It''s not very ladylike to eat an eight-ounce filet mignon covered in bearnaise. It''s really not ladylike to eat a twenty-two-ounce prime rib. My sisters and I both have a capacity to eat an enormous amount of red meat. My parents fostered a kind of feminism: choose what you want for dinner. Choose whether or not you want to have kids. As much as my father may have wanted a son, he didn''t complain about how many daughters he had. All three of us were told we could be anything we wanted to be.

My mother, who eventually divorced my dad, not so much for his infernal drinking as for his clumsy cheating, reminded my sisters and I never to rely on the money of men. So, like boys we ate huge steaks. Like men, each of us got big jobs. We are not the tiniest people you''ve ever met. "At least," my mom said, "you stopped at one or two." Kids, I thought she meant. Or maybe she meant steaks. When I returned to Utah from Portland for grad school, even my grad school friends were having kids.

Maybe there is something in the water but the part of me that wanted to have kids that had lain dormant in the back of my brain erupted. Now, when I saw families of eight, instead of thinking "planet," I thought, "can I borrow one?" I''ve always liked kids. I''ve always thought I''d be a good mom. How could I have known that deciding to have kids is one thing, having them and raising them is quite another. But, if being a good mom meant wringing your hands over every decision and wondering how the planet could survive your individual desire to procreate, then I was already the best mom in the world. Processed Meats is a book about wanting everything and knowing that there is a price to pay for getting it. Processed because hand-wringing and overthinking and mechanized worry. Meats because these babies and these steaks are so delicious and there is only one life to live and we should dig in and enjoy it.

Well, maybe we should forego the red meat but keep the bearnaise. The sauce is the best part.