Not Proud

[poliphilo]

I've started eating meat. It's France that's to blame. You scour the menu for the vegetarian option and all they've got is crudites- you know, raw carrot and zucchini and stuff- so I made a decision before we went-  for the next five days I'm a carnivore.

What I hadn't been prepared for was how my energy levels went up. 

But I'm going to insist we buy meat that's been raised ethically. That's my quarrel with meat-eating- not that I'm sentimental about animals, because I'm not- but that industrial farming is disgusting. 

Last night we had lamb steaks- in a mushroom sauce- with mashed potato. 

I'd forgotten food could be such fun.

Comments

[lblanchard.livejournal.com]

All of these things are ethical trade-offs. If we make a decision to eat one kind of food over another, we're privileging one form of life over another, aren't we? What about all those embryonic wheat and soy plants that will never be born because we've converted them to pasta and tofu?

Some food producers blur the ethically-raised label pretty badly, too. I hardly think that a chicken who's been allowed out of his coop once qualifies as a "free range chicken," but some marketers do.

My grandparents had a farm, so I've taken a chicken or two to the chop.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Ailz used to keep (and occasionally kill) chickens. She says they're nasty, vicious creatures and she has no compunction about eating them.

[mummm.livejournal.com]

It's true! Chickens ARE often nasty and vicious and turkeys are stupid... so feel free to eat them without any form of guilt. ;-)

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Maybe I'll have turkey for Christmas this year. How long is it since I last did that?

[mummm.livejournal.com]

I think you should!

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

It's a puzzle finding decent vegetarian foods at Christmas. In the past I've had complicated nut roasts which really weren't worth the bother of cooking.

[mummm.livejournal.com]

Nut Roast? That sounds interesting...

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Believe me, it ain't!

Free-range chickens

[zoe-1418.livejournal.com]

Our chickens -- we have four in the back yard -- are adorable and sweet, if dim-witted. One of them looks like a bearded professor and actually likes to be picked up. They'd follow us anywhere for a banana. True, they tell each other off now and then (for instance, when one hogs too much banana), but they are nice to us unless we're grabbing them and they're scared -- then we're at risk of a scratch from scrambling feet.

On the other hand, we don't have roosters -- because our law only permits hens (and only four) in the city, AND because they are not so nice, especially to the hens.

We are raising our chickens only for eggs, soil benefit (they can do wonders for the compost), and companionship, although we're not against raising chickens for meat (but our local law also forbids backyard slaughtering). These four girls are truly "free range," in that they spend their days outside the coop, eating weeds, bugs, and produce scraps from our compost. Studies have shown that eggs from truly free-range hens (as opposed to hens that are allowed to "look" outside now and then) are many, many times higher in all the "good stuff" nutritionally, and many, many times lower in any of the purported "bad stuff" that's in commercially/conventionally produced eggs.

Re: Free-range chickens

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I've never had anything much to do with livestock. Ailz says chickens can be horrid to one another- but I suppose that's true of most animal species- including homo sapiens.

I must be great to go out into the yard in the morning and pick up a fresh-laid breakfast egg.

Fresh-laid

[zoe-1418.livejournal.com]

Oh, it is! Although in our case we pick them up in the evening, when we put the girls to bed. Actually, they generally put themselves to bed, making their way into their coop and up into their "dormitory" as the sun begins to set. I just go close up the entrance so predators don't get them, and then I stick my head in through the egg door, collect what's there, and say a few good-night words to the ladies. (Sometimes I sing them a verse of "Good Night, Ladies," ending with "...and thank you for the eggs.")

I'll bet there's a big difference -- in how one ends up viewing the niceness or not-niceness -- between raising a large number of chickens and raising a small handful. I suspect it's more pleasant with just a few.

Re: Fresh-laid

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

What a lovely picture- the chickens trooping off to roost and you singing them to sleep.

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

When we kind of inherited a couple of chickens, they were indeed nasty creatures. They would mug the children if they were carrying anything edible and they tormented the cats, who were scared stiff of them.

Strangely I went back to eating meat last year after about 13 years of vegetarianism. I find my blood sugar levels are much more stable now. It also makes life easier because I can eat the same things as G and don't have to cook two different dinners.