I'm A Veterinarian Cuz I Don't Eat Meat

"There's no food in your food."  - Joan Cusack in Say Anything.


"I think this horse has turned..." - O Brother, Where Art Thou?


This post is brought to you by Food, Inc, FoodMatters, The Omnivore's Dilemma, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, several other books/magazines/documentaries, and my own conscience. Any resemblance to your eating habits is entirely coincidental. 


First of all, yes, this will be a slightly serious blog (scramble to get out now if you must, Chicken BobBabyPants) and no, I am not giving up meat and going vegan.  Although if the payoff is to have Shania Twain's rocking abs, then I may reconsider.


But I am going to try to change the way I eat and shop and cook and I need you guys, my little sweetie muckins, to keep me accountable and maybe even join me in my journey.


I don't mind eating meat.  I'm an animal lover as much as the next gal; I have my doggy, Mr. Milo Farts-A-Lot, and I've had horses and chickens and kitty cats, but I'm not hypocritical about killing and butchering and eating Bessie the bovine.  I love all meats really; besides the boring ol' chicken breast I've had goat, bear, bison, alligator, lamb, octopus, and I don't really turn up my nose at anything someone feels like cooking for me.  After all, I don't understand why us white bred (or is it bread? haha!) Americans will snarf down a hamburger or a chicken nugget but make gagging sounds over other animals.  Have you ever looked into a big old cow's brown eyes?  They're stinking adorable.  Chickens are snuggly little fuzzy cuties.  If you can eat that you have no business getting all appalled at munching on some lamb chops.  But that's not my point.  Where was I?  I have no idea.  Right.  


Meat.  


After living the last year in a group home where we ate only meat people gave us or the food bank sold us I have been more diligent than ever to get that @#$#%^ out of our system now.  We were eating frozen chicken that didn't come with labels.  Just huge unmarked fowls from some nameless factory.  Rolls of ground beef (or horse, who the heck knew).  Anyway, it gave me the creeps to eat it but eat it we did.  You put enough Rooster sauce on something and it's gonna be tasty.


Now that we're back to being able to shop the way I want, I still haven't made that leap to buying organic meat.  It's so unbelievably expensive!  No, wait.  It's not.  It's just that compared to the mass produced nastiness you can buy for a couple greenbacks a pound, it's expensive.  But have we really sunk so low, folks, that we would buy steak at the Dollar Tree?  


I'm not kidding.  They had it last week.


After learning that our chicken we buy is soaked in chlorine to get the bacteria to die and the beef is treated with ammonia for the same reason, I'm not sure I want to eat it again.  There's so much feces in our meat that I'd like to quit thinking about it now.  I mean, I'm a mom; I've dealt with poop on epic levels.  But I draw the line at eating it.  You do know that you have to cook meat to certain temperatures not because it's dangerous to eat the meat itself under cooked, but because you need to kill off all that lovely poop so you can eat it and not get sick.


I knew about soybeans and corn and GMOs.  I knew about organic dairy and I've been buying that for years.  I knew about free range chickens and I much prefer handing over my wrinkly dollars bills to a neighbor down the road for eggs.  But I've buried my head in the sand, so to speak, about the meat.


Now I'm not really talking about going vegetarian.  I love a medium rare steak.  I love chicken.  A meal without meat feels incomplete.  But I certainly can't afford to feed it to my family of five seven days a week.


So what Mike and I are proposing to the girls is to be meat free four days a week.  And on the three where we can have it, it'll be the good stuff.  This will be harder for them at lunch because I'm going to stop buying nuggets and fish sticks, which is their lunchtime staple food.  What about lunch meat?  I'm gonna assume that mechanically separated animal parts smooshed back together probably isn't super natural.  Who knows how many different turkeys are smashed into one paper thin slice?  We can't have peanut butter remember, due to G's allergies.  No one cares for the almond stuff.  There may be a lot of grilled cheese sandwiches in the Williams' future.  Ideas, please?


Is it really so bad?  Well, you could ask the workers who work at these plants (only 13 in the nation and they control the whole industry.  Fifty years ago there were thousands.  Isn't that weird?  How powerful are they?) but most are illegal and aren't going to talk to you. 


Sometimes I think that a hundred years from now, scientists are really going to shake their goatee-d heads and mutter about our stupidity.  Why are we questioning the onslaught of cancers and autism and ADD and diabetes and all of these maladies that are so on the rise, it's disgusting?  I can picture them saying as they nibble on a real tomato and not the kind that's been unnaturally ripened with methane gasses, "can't believe our ancestors couldn't figure out they were killing themselves...raising money for cures while they consumed huge quantities of pesticides, bleaches, GMOs, antibiotics...what a bunch of morons..."


Am I overreacting?  What do you think?  Does Tyson deserve our respect as long as their chickens are pumped full of so much food their legs can't support them and they've never seen daylight?  I have a soft spot for chickies...my sister had a brood as a kid and they all had names.  She also had a chicken hat that she wore in public just to humiliate me but that's another story for another day.


So what do you think?  Should Mike take up hunting?  Is organic milk not enough, should we go to raw?  Can we do this pseudo vegetarianism?  Will I lose weight?  Will I become an annoying person who refuses to eat at other people's houses and has weird restrictions that really make everyone want to smack me?  Will I have to wear patterned tights and put my four year old in a sling and only shop at fair trade markets?  Will I have to brew my own beer and go to story time and march in protests?  Will I start looking at clothing tags next?  I don't look good in patterned tights and Birkenstocks...  Will I start hanging out with the recyclers?  Cuz I stink at recycling and I think they'll vote me off the island eventually.  I have zero desire to own an electric car.  Can a liberal eater still vote Republican?   


Who's with me?


Criminy, I really want a flippin' hamburger now.   Get it?  Flippin' burgers??  HAHAHA!

spud country

BFFs together again!

My oldest friend, Aerie, surprised me with a visit. Oldest friend, like I've known her since kindergarten, not gosh, she looks good for a 120 year old. And I guess it's not a myth, my eyes really do disappear when I smile.

I thought this was a nice artsy shot.

Fun with friends at the lavender farm.

Anna is disgustingly photogenic!

Moose doesn't understand the concept of smelling flowers yet, so he simply licks them. Cousin Karysse agrees with him: balloons are endlessly fun, at least until they pop.

Cora in a tree (where else would she be?)

Cora's surprise birthday party.

Some birthday pals: Sarah, Ethan, Cora, Channing, Emma.

Water balloon fights.

Well, it was time for another Idaho trip for me and the ankle biters. Strangely enough there are no misadventures to report this time: no bashing in of my van's windows, no running out of gas, and most importantly, no freak blizzards and shutting down of highways. So, pardon me if you don't get a good belly laugh at my expense today, such is life.

We started out the 2 week trip with a surprise birthday party for Cora's ninth. She was surprised, or more to the point, confused, and couldn't quite figure out how all her old friends showed up at the park at the same time. It was sweltering hot, but we had water balloons and a nice shady tree to climb up into. She was spoiled rotten, and now has the rollerblades and Nintendo DS to prove it, among other crazy amounts of loot. I can't believe it was nine years ago that we brought our little Yoda lookalike home from the hospital...sniff, snort, weep.

We spent a day at the lavender farm in Marsing where the kids got to pick their own lavender, pose by force for photos from their camera happy mamas, and pet their tame bumblebees.

My oldest and dearest friend, Aerie, and her little sis, my own little sis' oldest and dearest friend, Tanager, surprised me with an overnight visit and it was so much fun to chat and laugh and see our cute little kids together. What a blessing old friends are! I hope when my kids are grown they keep a precious handful of their childhood pals to reminisce with once they too are old and gray. Sappy? Yes, a bit, but also true!

There was a lot of time spent at Gramma and Papa's High House, mostly on the wrap around deck where Gianni polished off his potty training by running amok in his birthday suit. He gives new meaning to the term "golden arches."

We got to go see the best movie in the history of movies, The Princess Bride, at a park with a huge inflatable movie screen, one-bazillion people, and lots of snacks. Gianni fell asleep in my arms halfway through, no surprise as it started at 10 pm, and just when it started to get chilly he obligingly pee-ed on me, keeping us both warm for the duration.

We spent several nights at the Chateau Shafer, relaxing and playing Phase 10 and shopping. Mariah and I were forced, er, I mean, invited, to attend a spa put together by our entrepreneurial children. We were presented with a menu of services with footnotes that read 'Real money only,' and 'No checks accepted.' A few quarters got us massages by Isaac and mani's and pedi's by the girls. They then contributed their wealth to an ice cream treat. We were forever inspired by Sadie's superwoman strength through her chemo. She is a heroine in every sense.

The drive home, though peppered with sad thoughts of leaving behind our nearest and dearest, went well for the first 8 hours. Then we hit Rawlins, WY, which is the geographical oddity of the world. You can drive and drive and drive and never get any closer to home. It doesn't matter where you want to go, Rawlins is a black hole that is always a minimum of "2 more hours to go." I would have fallen asleep at the wheel due to boredom and frustration, but my kid's loopiness and chattiness and overall weirdness, helped me stay awake. Did I mention we have no dvd player for the car? No?

Now life is back to normal, or as normal as it gets for us. We are one home visit away from getting our foster parent certifications and are busily getting prepared for beginning the fourth and second grades. Our air conditioning/furnace mother board in our Boise house is broken, forcing our property manager to take $500 out of August's rent. If anyone wins the lottery this month, please keep us in mind. We will gladly pay you back on Monday for a hamburger today.

The middler donates to Locks of Love

Idaho trip '09

So forgive me, please, as it's been a bit since I was last on here (yeah, just pretend you noticed, it's good for my ego). We made a crazy trip to Idaho to see my middle daughter, Sadie, who decided to pepper our dull lives with a removal of her kidney and follow up chemo and radiation therapy. Just when you think you have the hang of this whole life thing, wham-bam, thank you ma'am, a wrench gets thrown in it and you have to just go with the flow. It was of course, wonderful to see everyone we love and miss on a daily basis, even in the midst of worries and surgeries, etc. All my friend's kids have grown another foot and while I did get some cute photos, the majority of the time I left my camera in my diaper bag where I always had it and yet somehow in my old age, managed to still not remember to not forget to take lots of pictures. I still don't know how and when I went from teenager to Gen X-er to now, a thirty-something with gray hair and sore muscles and a failing memory. Anyway. Our trip itself was naturally not completely uneventful, but thankfully not AS eventful as prior journeys. Boise had lovely weather for us: shorts and tank tops and flipflops and sunburns that nicely turned a spiffy shade of bronze for us, campfires at the High House with hot dogs and a sandbox that Gianni enjoyed like no one's business, blooming trees and budding flowers. Heck, I think there were even Disney animated squirrels and birds and mice running around singing happy songs. Then, sigh, we crossed back into Wyoming. The land that spring forgot. Fog and blowing snow and rain and grayness and barren landscapes with nothing but tumbleweeds and antelope, who neither dress themselves in jaunty little outfits nor sing happy songs. But in spite of that welcome, it is nice to be home where we have more than 3 shirts and 5 pairs of underwear to rotate through before we have to borrow someone's washer and dryer. We had a great trip but I figured I would keep this post simple and write about one particular evening last week. Disclaimer: this is totally not about me and my friends. It's just a funny story told to me by...a friend. A friend with friends who are so not as cool as me and my friends. We did much cooler things all week long, oh yes indeedy.

Ladie's Night! Margeritas! Except ours, uh, I meant to say, theirs were spelling correctly. No kids! No hubbies! Freedom! It went to these ladies heads. So much freedom they were at a loss to know what to do with themselves. Literally. At a loss. Much time was spent talking about what to do while rotating drinks around the table (too icy, too sweet, too tequila-y, not enough tequila, wrong flavor, dropped salsa in this one, yadda yadda). Ladies decide to see a movie. One not rated G and animated. Movie doesn't start for another hour and a half. Ladies don't know what to do with themselves. Liquor store already closed (hey, there's an advantage in Wyoming!) Ladies huddled together in minivan. Obviously this story isn't about me; we'd be huddled in something cooler, like a Hummer. Ladies go to grocery store and buy mini margeritas and tiny bottles of wine. Ladies park in theater parking lot and hope tinted windows hide their shameful open containers. Ladies get slightly buzzed and giggle like school girls. Mall security is only a few cars away! Ladies get nervous like the good church goers they are, but can't stop laughing. Sadistic lady in front seat pushes the window button and scares the living daylights out of lady in back seat, who thought for a minute the security guys were scaling the car. More giggling. Diaper bags come in handy for sneaking in more mini margeritas and wine into theater. Ticket taker looks at ladies like they are insane. Or drunk. Ladies play it cool. Suave. Walk in straight (ish) line to see movie, which is rated a whole PG-13. Ladies not brave enough to actually drink anymore in the theater, especially lady on the end who is afraid the rest will bail on her if security guard, all 11 years and 88 pounds of him, approaches them. Ladies sober up by end of movie (is it because enough time went by or is it because they all had the thought that Zac Efron would be more interested in their daughters than he would be them? No one knows for sure) and go home to babies and husbands who ask, 'How was your time, honey?' and ladies all reply, 'Fun, dear. Bible study is always fun.'

Good times. For my friend. Should she write a blog, her story would be soooo not worth blogging about. We who blog have much more sensational tidbits to write about, don'tcha know.