I just wanted to share that last night I had a dream (nightmare?) that I was visiting one of the farms that I buy from at the farmer's market, and all I really remember from the dream were these giant mutant turkeys that were as tall as giraffes but had huge bodies. So apparently the book is having a pretty real affect on me, consciously and subconsciously.
I did ask around at the farmer's market yesterday. I only bought meat at two stands - the poultry stand does NOT grow their own animals, but the stand where I bought the beef does. But Dave and I did find a local meat CSA that we might join. And they let you pick what you want so you don't just get a box of whatever they want to give you, and you can skip weeks. They basically use it like a debit account instead of a true CSA. Pretty cool.
Yesterday I did pretty well. No meat for dinner, and I had leftover ribs for lunch, which were from the market. So the only questionable thing was the bacon in the beans.
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
Monday, July 5, 2010
Animals I Ate
Since my last post, I just want to take a few minutes to think about the meat I have eaten so far. What would I have given up for 4th of July this weekend if I decided to only eat local meat?
Real Meat (aka it was farm-raised and I am relatively confident about what is in it):
Ribs
Half the chicken in the chicken dip
Crap (aka I don't know where it was raised and there is a 99% chance it was raised and slaughtered by an industry I don't want to support):
Chili at Hoss's
French Onion Soup made with beef broth at Hoss's
Bacon in the baked beans
Bubba burgers
sliders
So far, even though we are buying our meat at the farmer's market, I am eating almost twice as much meat that wasn't from the market. Plus there are things you just don't think about having meat in them, like french onion soup. Being a vegetarian must be hard.
Real Meat (aka it was farm-raised and I am relatively confident about what is in it):
Ribs
Half the chicken in the chicken dip
Crap (aka I don't know where it was raised and there is a 99% chance it was raised and slaughtered by an industry I don't want to support):
Chili at Hoss's
French Onion Soup made with beef broth at Hoss's
Bacon in the baked beans
Bubba burgers
sliders
So far, even though we are buying our meat at the farmer's market, I am eating almost twice as much meat that wasn't from the market. Plus there are things you just don't think about having meat in them, like french onion soup. Being a vegetarian must be hard.
Saturday, July 3, 2010
Eating Animals
A few weeks ago, between tongue-mollifying bites of huge steaks Dave artfully, almost magically, prepared on the grill, I bantered with Dave about the possibility of having vegetarian children. We said we would never think twice if our child brought home someone of the same gender or a different race, but we would be highly disappointed if our child decided to associate with vegans. We proceeded to have a very tongue in cheek "Guess Who is Coming to Dinner"-esque exchange. "You don't eat meat? You're not good enough for my daughter!"
I have never thought about not eating meat. Ever. Whenever someone talks about being a vegetarian, I point to my eye teeth and say "That's why I eat meat. My parents paid an orthodontist good money to make sure those teeth were in the right place for me to devour a good steak." To me, it seems like a natural, and therefore necessary part of the diet. If we have evolved to be meat-eaters, than an all veggie diet cannot totally sustain us.
I was never thwarted by the animal cruelty argument, either. Growing up on a farm, practically on a factory farm, even, I understood the place of animals from an early age (theirs and mine). It was not unusual for me to see my Nana mercifully step on a sick or hurt baby chick and scoop it up into a bucket for the pit. I never felt sorry for the thousands of chickens crammed into her houses - sure they didn't have the room to run, but they were going to be food. Why did it matter? Again, when they were scooped up by their feet and crammed into crates on a big truck, they were just off to die anyway. Every fall we harvested our grain and every winter we harvested our animals. I saw pigs being shot, gutted and hanging in my Pop's shop. My cousin and I would grab their feet and dance with the carcasses and laugh. It was a tradition. Even animals not used for food were treated as animals, not humans. Money was not spent to take a dog to the vet to die - with tears in his eyes, my father would take the dog off to the woods with a shot gun and a shovel and come home somewhat forlorn. Very "Of Mice and Men." We loved our animals, but they were just that.
Reading Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer was really the first time I have ever thought about not eating animals any more. I can't say that there was anything shocking to me in the book - I grew up among it all. He attributes the birth of factory farming to a farm in Sussex County, Delaware, so obviously I have been immersed in this from a young age. What the book did do is put together just the right facts and realities to make me think. And this is the conclusion I came to...
I still do not think that raising animals for meat is inherently cruel. I still think that nature intended us to eat at least some meat as part of our diet. But what is being sold in our grocery stores today is NOT meat. It's really a Frankenstein's monster of genetically modified animal flesh masking a paradoxical cocktail of bacteria and anti-biotics, hormones, and cess-pool water. (Up to 30% of chicken meat you buy can be water weight - and not just any water, but the dirty water used to scald just killed chickens, many which release their bowels into the water.) I am not opposed to breeding animals for their best or most useful traits, but we are talking about animals that are bred to be sickly and not even able to walk.
On top of the disgusting concoction that these farms are passing off as meat, consider that livestock now contributes to global warming more than any other cause, including transportation; the conditions these animals live in make PEOPLE sick and contribute to species-jumping super-flus; and farming like this actually causes, not cures, hunger across the world, because the amount of food produced from an animal is less than the amount of food that could be produced from the grain it eats. In other words, the grain a cow eats before slaughter could feed more people than the cow itself.
I am not disgusted by eating meat in a traditional sense, but I am disgusted by what the meat industry has been able to get away with, especially because I have a farming background myself. I am disgusted by what they are actually allowed to sell us and what we all eat every day. Although I am not disgusted by killing animals for meat per se, I am disgusted by the real cruelty that has been allowed to run rampant on many of these farms. Like most of the processed foods I am trying to get away from eating, the meats we eat are contributing to a host of health problems. But I guess the question now is what am I going to do about it?
So now I am asking myself what affect this book really had on me. Is this something I am going to be on a soapbox about for a week and then forget the impact it had on me? I hope not. But following through with this ideal requires some changes on my part. We are already buying most of our meat from the Farmer's Market, but truthfully I have no idea how the meat is produced, so I might need to ask some questions of the sellers before I really feel comfortable with what I am buying. Outside of our home and what I can verify is local and family farmed, though, I would have to eat a vegetarian diet. Let me think about what that means - no Thanksgiving turkey at my Grandma's, no more of my mom's meat loaf, and no more of Nana's chicken salad. I wouldn't eat any meat at anyone else's house, unless I knew they bought their meat like I do - and I don't know of anyone who does that now. Also, it would mean no more meat at the grocery store, so if we ran out of something from Tuesday farmer's market, we would have to eat vegetarian until the next farmer's market. Probably the hardest part would be no meat eating out. (except maybe Homegrown and a couple other organic restaurants up here.) And we love to eat out. That means no Big Al's Roast Beef or corn dogs at the fair in a couple of weeks. No true Nicoboli at the beach (without the ground beef isn't the real thing).
So I guess in the next week I am going to really look at the meat I eat. I am going to talk to some people at the farmer's market about what they are raising and selling. I will be getting back to you all about what I really decide to do. Because not eating meat outside of my home is a huge commitment that I would not take lightly.
If anyone wants to get on board with me or at least wants to know what I am talking about, I highly recommend reading "Eating Animals." I love reading non-fiction, but if you don't, Foer will definitely make it easy for you. (On a side note, his "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close" is a fictional novel and probably one of my favorite books.)
I will keep you posted. Please post your words of encouragement or discouragement, questions or opinions about this!
I have never thought about not eating meat. Ever. Whenever someone talks about being a vegetarian, I point to my eye teeth and say "That's why I eat meat. My parents paid an orthodontist good money to make sure those teeth were in the right place for me to devour a good steak." To me, it seems like a natural, and therefore necessary part of the diet. If we have evolved to be meat-eaters, than an all veggie diet cannot totally sustain us.
I was never thwarted by the animal cruelty argument, either. Growing up on a farm, practically on a factory farm, even, I understood the place of animals from an early age (theirs and mine). It was not unusual for me to see my Nana mercifully step on a sick or hurt baby chick and scoop it up into a bucket for the pit. I never felt sorry for the thousands of chickens crammed into her houses - sure they didn't have the room to run, but they were going to be food. Why did it matter? Again, when they were scooped up by their feet and crammed into crates on a big truck, they were just off to die anyway. Every fall we harvested our grain and every winter we harvested our animals. I saw pigs being shot, gutted and hanging in my Pop's shop. My cousin and I would grab their feet and dance with the carcasses and laugh. It was a tradition. Even animals not used for food were treated as animals, not humans. Money was not spent to take a dog to the vet to die - with tears in his eyes, my father would take the dog off to the woods with a shot gun and a shovel and come home somewhat forlorn. Very "Of Mice and Men." We loved our animals, but they were just that.
Reading Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer was really the first time I have ever thought about not eating animals any more. I can't say that there was anything shocking to me in the book - I grew up among it all. He attributes the birth of factory farming to a farm in Sussex County, Delaware, so obviously I have been immersed in this from a young age. What the book did do is put together just the right facts and realities to make me think. And this is the conclusion I came to...
I still do not think that raising animals for meat is inherently cruel. I still think that nature intended us to eat at least some meat as part of our diet. But what is being sold in our grocery stores today is NOT meat. It's really a Frankenstein's monster of genetically modified animal flesh masking a paradoxical cocktail of bacteria and anti-biotics, hormones, and cess-pool water. (Up to 30% of chicken meat you buy can be water weight - and not just any water, but the dirty water used to scald just killed chickens, many which release their bowels into the water.) I am not opposed to breeding animals for their best or most useful traits, but we are talking about animals that are bred to be sickly and not even able to walk.
On top of the disgusting concoction that these farms are passing off as meat, consider that livestock now contributes to global warming more than any other cause, including transportation; the conditions these animals live in make PEOPLE sick and contribute to species-jumping super-flus; and farming like this actually causes, not cures, hunger across the world, because the amount of food produced from an animal is less than the amount of food that could be produced from the grain it eats. In other words, the grain a cow eats before slaughter could feed more people than the cow itself.
I am not disgusted by eating meat in a traditional sense, but I am disgusted by what the meat industry has been able to get away with, especially because I have a farming background myself. I am disgusted by what they are actually allowed to sell us and what we all eat every day. Although I am not disgusted by killing animals for meat per se, I am disgusted by the real cruelty that has been allowed to run rampant on many of these farms. Like most of the processed foods I am trying to get away from eating, the meats we eat are contributing to a host of health problems. But I guess the question now is what am I going to do about it?
So now I am asking myself what affect this book really had on me. Is this something I am going to be on a soapbox about for a week and then forget the impact it had on me? I hope not. But following through with this ideal requires some changes on my part. We are already buying most of our meat from the Farmer's Market, but truthfully I have no idea how the meat is produced, so I might need to ask some questions of the sellers before I really feel comfortable with what I am buying. Outside of our home and what I can verify is local and family farmed, though, I would have to eat a vegetarian diet. Let me think about what that means - no Thanksgiving turkey at my Grandma's, no more of my mom's meat loaf, and no more of Nana's chicken salad. I wouldn't eat any meat at anyone else's house, unless I knew they bought their meat like I do - and I don't know of anyone who does that now. Also, it would mean no more meat at the grocery store, so if we ran out of something from Tuesday farmer's market, we would have to eat vegetarian until the next farmer's market. Probably the hardest part would be no meat eating out. (except maybe Homegrown and a couple other organic restaurants up here.) And we love to eat out. That means no Big Al's Roast Beef or corn dogs at the fair in a couple of weeks. No true Nicoboli at the beach (without the ground beef isn't the real thing).
So I guess in the next week I am going to really look at the meat I eat. I am going to talk to some people at the farmer's market about what they are raising and selling. I will be getting back to you all about what I really decide to do. Because not eating meat outside of my home is a huge commitment that I would not take lightly.
If anyone wants to get on board with me or at least wants to know what I am talking about, I highly recommend reading "Eating Animals." I love reading non-fiction, but if you don't, Foer will definitely make it easy for you. (On a side note, his "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close" is a fictional novel and probably one of my favorite books.)
I will keep you posted. Please post your words of encouragement or discouragement, questions or opinions about this!
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
Daily Food - 6/14
Breakfast: 2 scrambled eggs and an apple.
Lunch: Leftovers from my mom's - what could be better? Creamed carrots and peas and dumplings, and a class of water. I also threw in some yogurt for protein.
With lunch I had a little pineapple upside down cake, also left over from my birthday.
Snack: I had some bolthouse farms protein mocha cappuccino flavor, and a black bean and cheese quesadilla on w whole grain tortilla.
Dinner: We made spaghetti squash on the grill, and then shredded it with some butter. With the smoky from the grill, I can't even tell you how good that tastes. Then we made some turkey legs. This was a first but they were on sale so we gave it a go. The Renn Faire has nothing on Dave, I have to say. These were smoky and delicious.
The Good: I walked twice today! Morning and evening! Most of what I ate was pretty solid. I have been reading labels a lot more.
The Bad: Probably the food I brought home from my parents, particularly the cake because I know it was made with cake mix, and I am not sure about the dumplings because I know they were the frozen kind (shh, don't tell.)
I'm Back!
Shew! I needed that break. I am not proud of what I ate, but sometimes when you have several hundred papers to grade and two graduations in one week, not to mention the rare freedom to actually go out to eat, you just need to let loose a little. Let's just say there were at least 3 stops at Hardee's that I am not proud of. And for the record, I didn't go on hiatus to "hide" the junk I was eating, I was just too busy to keep up with the blog.
But sweet summer has arrived.
Here is a little bit of what you missed...
Fortunately or unfortunately, my birthday is right before the end of the school year. Since it was a big one this year, I was determined to get away, which might be why I was so behind at school for the end of the year. But it was worth it. We went to Williamsburg, VA for the weekend and had a blast.
We stopped for Five Guys burgers on the way down. This looked like most of my meals this week.
And fries, of course...
This was my actual birthday lunch: A delicious veggie quiche with fruit and fruit bread. This was very tasty. It was full of nice crunchy veggies. It was kind of unexpected, and pretty light considering it was BOILING outside.
We also had a very nice dinner that night. It got destroyed before I could take a picture, but we had an appetizer of fried oysters and rockfish pizza, and then I had crabcakes on a bed of ham and cheese grits. I have eaten my share of crabcakes, but I never imagines how well they would go with the grits. Really delicious.
And this was my birthday dessert - a creme brulee sampler - there was a classic vanilla, honey ginger, and a chocolate raspberry. You can also see my Mint Julep in the background. When in the south...
Before we left Williamsburg the next day, we had lunch at one of the old-time taverns. This is a chicken pie and it was amazing. I also had the best pecan pie I have ever had in my life.
On the way home, we stopped at Jesse Wong's Chinese Kitchen (hey - it was there...) and I had singapore noodles. Not bad.
Skip ahead a week - this was my birthday part two. We went to my parents for my birthday celebration there, and stopped at Homegrown Cafe in Newark, my old stomping grounds. This was one of my favorite restaurants when I lived there, and still is. It doesn't hurt that most of their menu, if not all, is organic, local, and can be made vegetarian or vegan. These are veggie summer rolls. Very light, crispy, with some mint in them and a nice spicy sauce. I also had the falafels and their signature side salad. But there is no picture of the falafels. I once devised a plan to get my sister a job there so she could sneak me free falafels, so you should know that they do not stay on the plate long enough for a picture.
We were NOT planning on doing this, but the cupcake store is right next door to Homegrown. We were doing a great job of avoiding it, but then we saw the sign. It said "Margarita cupcakes" and there was no avoiding. And I am glad we didn't. I think this may be my new favorite flavor there. And at least we stayed healthy with some milk.
There were definitely some ups and downs this week. But that's behind me! So - moving ahead...
But sweet summer has arrived.
Here is a little bit of what you missed...
Fortunately or unfortunately, my birthday is right before the end of the school year. Since it was a big one this year, I was determined to get away, which might be why I was so behind at school for the end of the year. But it was worth it. We went to Williamsburg, VA for the weekend and had a blast.
We stopped for Five Guys burgers on the way down. This looked like most of my meals this week.
And fries, of course...
This was my actual birthday lunch: A delicious veggie quiche with fruit and fruit bread. This was very tasty. It was full of nice crunchy veggies. It was kind of unexpected, and pretty light considering it was BOILING outside.
We also had a very nice dinner that night. It got destroyed before I could take a picture, but we had an appetizer of fried oysters and rockfish pizza, and then I had crabcakes on a bed of ham and cheese grits. I have eaten my share of crabcakes, but I never imagines how well they would go with the grits. Really delicious.And this was my birthday dessert - a creme brulee sampler - there was a classic vanilla, honey ginger, and a chocolate raspberry. You can also see my Mint Julep in the background. When in the south...
Before we left Williamsburg the next day, we had lunch at one of the old-time taverns. This is a chicken pie and it was amazing. I also had the best pecan pie I have ever had in my life.
On the way home, we stopped at Jesse Wong's Chinese Kitchen (hey - it was there...) and I had singapore noodles. Not bad. 
Skip ahead a week - this was my birthday part two. We went to my parents for my birthday celebration there, and stopped at Homegrown Cafe in Newark, my old stomping grounds. This was one of my favorite restaurants when I lived there, and still is. It doesn't hurt that most of their menu, if not all, is organic, local, and can be made vegetarian or vegan. These are veggie summer rolls. Very light, crispy, with some mint in them and a nice spicy sauce. I also had the falafels and their signature side salad. But there is no picture of the falafels. I once devised a plan to get my sister a job there so she could sneak me free falafels, so you should know that they do not stay on the plate long enough for a picture.
We were NOT planning on doing this, but the cupcake store is right next door to Homegrown. We were doing a great job of avoiding it, but then we saw the sign. It said "Margarita cupcakes" and there was no avoiding. And I am glad we didn't. I think this may be my new favorite flavor there. And at least we stayed healthy with some milk. 
There were definitely some ups and downs this week. But that's behind me! So - moving ahead...
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
Hiatus
Sorry if I have disappointed any of my loyal followers, but this week has been absolutely insane! It is the last week of school so for any of you teacher, you know what it is like. I am going to take a break from this week, although I DO have pictures from my birthday weekend that I will put up when I get a chance to do anything other than eat, sleep, and grade! I will pick up again next week! Also, once school is out, I want to start doing more than just posting daily food, so let me know what questions you have and I will be happy to research them. And let me know what types of things you would like to see - info about bad ingredients, new recipes, etc.
Thursday, June 3, 2010
New Recipe! - Coconut Shrimp Curry!
1-2 T olive oil
1 T curry
1/2 T garlic powder
1/2 T red pepper
red pepper flakes
salt and pepper
any fresh or frozen veggies
1 can coconut milk
1 lb frozen shrimp
Add all the spices to the oil in a big pan. Let the spices kind of roast in the oil - it makes it so much better and it smells really great. Do NOT skimp on salt or this will taste gross. Toss in the veggies - I like a stir fry mix for frozen, or broccoli or snap peas fresh are good. Once those get started a bit, pour in the coconut milk and shrimp. Cook until the veggies are done and the shrimp is pink. Serve over rice.
1 T curry
1/2 T garlic powder
1/2 T red pepper
red pepper flakes
salt and pepper
any fresh or frozen veggies
1 can coconut milk
1 lb frozen shrimp
Add all the spices to the oil in a big pan. Let the spices kind of roast in the oil - it makes it so much better and it smells really great. Do NOT skimp on salt or this will taste gross. Toss in the veggies - I like a stir fry mix for frozen, or broccoli or snap peas fresh are good. Once those get started a bit, pour in the coconut milk and shrimp. Cook until the veggies are done and the shrimp is pink. Serve over rice.
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