Whether it was the perfect autumn day, a measure of my surrender to weariness, or the simple meal of vegetables I ate for dinner, I feel so content. Green beans and local purple potatoes and peppers that a farmer and retired professor showered into my lap (with a gruff, 'don't want to take these home') and I carried around in my capacious purse all afternoon. . .onions, a little tomato, and a long simmer.
I never feel this happy when I eat meat, except perhaps turkey, and that's the sleepy drug kicking in, I suppose, and the fact that I always eat it with family on holidays. I feel vegetarianism at my heels again. I've become picky and paranoid about meat lately, even local, all-natural, no-hormone meat. And then, the other day, this happened: We were driving along, almost off the interstate, almost into the bosom of our little town, when a big semi passed by. It was one of those with slits in the walls, and through the slits we could see great big soft, dirty black cows.
"Where are they going?" the girls wanted to know, delighted that, Richard Scarry fashion, they'd seen a truck full of cows.
"I'm not sure exactly," I said, not untruthfully, since I didn't know WHICH slaughterhouse they were bound for.
"I think they're going to the fair," one daughter suggested, and then another said they might be going to a great big cow park, and then Elspeth concluded they were headed for a field of flowers.
That would be nice. Ug. It was like a knife had plunged itself into my liver. All I could see was the death-agony eyeroll that accompanies a cow being slaughtered.
The sticker on the back of the semi said I [heart] LOVE BEEF. I did not read it aloud.
I think I'm a vegetarian, I said to Martin. That clinches it.
In other happier news, for the first time I saw a semi with its bed full of apples--not crates of apples or bags of apples. Just the naked spheres tossed in. There must have been thousands and thousands, piled to the top. It brought to mind another Richard Scarry fantasy: the overturned truck with apples strewn everywhere and the truck driver, in happy resignation, setting up a stand with "Apple Cider" advertised on a jolly sign.
Here's a cup of tea and some dahlias for you, be they a bit out of focus:
Enjoy!
5 comments:
Really, no meat? No more chicken tikka masala for you, young lady!
T
We must listen to our bodies, they will tell us what we should be eating.
I am cutting way back on meat, especially red meat. When we eat it we try to get Buffalo, far leaner and less greasy.
Wild game is the best of course.
But we shouldn't be stubborn either.
Look at our teeth.
We have Molars,cuspids and bi-cuspids for crushing and crunching, incisors for tearing.
Equipped to eat everything our God has declared clean.
All of us would be better off if we ate less meat, especially fast junk varieties.
Lovely prose as always dearie!
oh kim...I do hear what you are saying...and vegetables are wonderful...and yet there is something about growing your own meat...and eating it...so much better then the tofu and tempeh options...
and yet on the farm last week we slaughtered our pigs and cows...along with our male dairy calf...and Bridget and Don(the farmers) had to explain to their children why the cows were being killed. They are vegetarians...and yet despite the tears...is it not good and lovely to confront the realities of life and death.
I don't know...is it okay to raise animals to have a good life and then kill them?
i think yes...and yet maybe there is too much death everywhere...
be well and it is so good to read your blog again.
Katie, I agree with you. I can't bring myself to pure vegetarianism, especially since my friend T above taunted me with visions of her chicken tikka masala. (I am salivating as I write, actually--not a pretty sight).
We've taken the girls up to the highland cattle farm where we've bought beef before so they could see the happy cows that would be in our stomachs. . .they seemed totally unphased. It's just the slaughterhouses that make me very sad. . .and even some of our local meat, because of regulations, have to be taken to commercial slaughterhouses. Eeek. I knew a guy who worked in a slaughterhouse for a while and his stories will make you switch over permanantly to brussel sprouts. As for actually having loved the animal I'm eating, I am not there yet.
I love Indian clay pot cooking too.
We have quite an extensive community in Cary from that part of the world, lots of great places to eat.
Their bread is to die for!
If you every come here to visit we can feed your Nan and Tikka Masala monkey!
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