come_to_think

I had a guest a couple of days ago, so I bought a pair of Cornish game
hens as a sort of preThanksving. I would have bought one for me
today, but there were no single ones, so instead I bought a little box
of four lamb chops for the luxury of eating them with my fingers. I
do not dare to eat lamb chops in company, because I am too clumsy to
eat them with a knife & fork. (I remember a struggle to eat one in my
childhood, which I gave up in tears, shouting "It's not worth it".) I
also had kasha and, having forgotten to buy a vegetable, a salad, for
which I had lettuce & scallions on had. Candied pomelo peels for
dessert. Could have been worse.

I remember another deviant Thanksgiving, must have been in 1962 or '3,
when I was in California and was invited by a old childhood friend of
my family. She served roast beef, and told us that she had mentioned
in a class she taught that was going to do so. "Oh, they must have
thought you were a Communist!" said the only person in the company who
was not aware that she was in fact a Party member. This was followed
by an amusing silence.
--
--- Joe Fineman joe_f@verizon.net

||: The prince of virtues is courage, and the crown of courage :||
||: is contempt for public opinion. :||

Current Mood: Eh.
Current Music: Most recently, Child ballads

After doing without pig meat for a while (http://come-to-think.livejournal.com/33420.html; https://come-to-think.dreamwidth.org/33201.html), it occurred to me that there must be places where I could buy it in the reasonable hope that the pigs it came from had been treated with some decency. Sure enough, Google revealed quite a few sources of humane bacon in the Boston area, including a chain store called Whole Foods. There is even one on the way to the Fens, so I could make an expedition of it & get blown as well.

As a staunch antiprimitivist ("organic" & "natural" are not commendatory words for me), I felt a bit out of place in that territory, but had no difficulty in coming out with a 12-oz package of Niman double-smoked uncured bacon, "humane", $7. That was the day before yesterday. I have since used it for two batches of liver & onions and two pancake breakfasts. It is not the same commodity as bacon from tortured pigs: It is much fatter (fine with me, as I can use the fat to grease the pan & make the batter), it is sliced thicker, and it does not get crisp (rather chewy even when thoroly cooked). It will do. And when I run out, I'll probably get laid again.

I have eaten meat all my life, and am not about to stop. However, I am respectful of (some) vegetarians and try to keep up with their arguments and evidence.

Evidence, for me, is more important. For example, I rather doubt if the chickens in egg factories are unhappy because they are not scratching in henyards. For all I know, they are in hen heaven (they are, after all, our creations, and we did not breed them for activity). On the other hand, I have no trouble believing that a calf spending its life in a crate with continuous diarrhea is miserable. Calves are different from humans, but not that different. On those grounds, for many years I have abstained from veal, which I never liked much anyway. (If there were a decent German restaurant I could get to without a car, I might be tempted by Wienerschnitzel, but I suppose I could resist the temptation. I keep connected to my German roots by preparing red cabbage at home from time to time.)

I am not squeamish about butchery. In highschool I chopped off some turkeys' heads for Thanksgiving, and they did not seem to mind much. In the commune I lived in in the '70s, I never got to do meat processing, but I heard the shot in the barn & saw a dog playing with a steer's skull as preambles to having hamburger for dinner. Some Christians invited a friend of mine to Easter dinner a while ago, and he got to cut the lamb's throat; that sounded kind of interesting.

Now a video is making the rounds about a piggery in Iowa. Do not view it too close to mealtime or bedtime:
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/26757660/ns/us_news-crime_and_courts/t/undercover-video-shows-workers-abusing-pigs/#.Uc-KKC53x8E.
(As I first saw it, it included the scene described in the text, in which workers are training each other in cruelty. I have not been able to find that complete version in subsequent searches.) Such sporadic viciousness is clear evidence of the power of such work to attract bad people & make them worse -- and of management's neglect of its plain duty to get rid of them. Many of the other, less spectacular torments are direct results of policy, and are (it seems) legal.

And what is the industry doing about it? In a remarkably impudent display of bad faith, it is lobbying the state legislature to make it illegal to take pictures without the owner's permission! I hope that these revelations will shame the legislature, but one never knows. On the contrary, it is clearly in the public interest to encourage such amateur whistleblowing. It is far more effective than occasional government inspections, and cheaper too. I would not favor giving regulatory power over the managers to fanatics, but (after they have purged themselves of psychopaths) they might find it in them to hire someone like Temple Grandin to give them temperate advice.

I am not very dependent on pig products. I have an occasional porkchop. What I will miss most is having bacon with pancakes & using the bacon fat for the pancakes; but I have plenty of other fats for that purpose. (There is such a thing as turkey bacon, but it doesn't have enough fat.)

I expect someday there will be a technological fix. I would not object in the least if my porkchop were sliced off a cylinder extruded from a vat of pig muscle cancer, or if my chicken wings were budded as teratomata on a bone in a nutrient tank. I dare say most people would object, but perhaps enough videos of slaughterhouses will change most people's minds.

Breakfast: A small glass of orange juice. Half an English muffin with butter & blueberry jam. An omelet (2 medium eggs) with cheddar cheese, mushroom, salami, and scallion. A big mug of black coffee.

Lunch: An open sandwich of bread, mustard, ham, dill pickle, and lettuce. Six baby carrots. A pear & cheese.

Dinner (planned): A small beefsteak rubbed with garlic & sauteed medium rare. A small baked potato with sour cream & mushroom slices previously cooked under the steak; peppered. Shredded red cabbage cooked with chopped onion, flour, salt, pepper, & vinegar. A glass of red wine (Sutter Home cabernet sauvignon). A slice of Entenmann's cranberry orange loaf cake with brandy.

Current Mood: cheerful

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Entries tagged with food

Deviant Thanksgivings

Torturing pigs, contd

Torturing pigs

Day 04 -- What I ate today

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