Fish Is Flesh: Get It Right!

The biggest garden surprise so far this year is my quince tree bursting into delicate blooms.  I am only familiar with the salmon colored flowering quinces and so wasn't expecting the rosebuds I found on my quince one morning this past week.  They open into the most delicate papery blossoms.  The tree is too thin to be able to support fruit so if the fruit develops I will have to pinch them off. 


Back to the whole recession behavior...I really hope that the changes people are making in their lives are permanent.  I wonder how many people understand that they need to be making changes in consumption and habits for the long haul?  Growing our own food, reusing as many things as we can, not consuming so much, driving less, buying more locally...we need to do this all the time. 


I am not trying to be a party pooper here.  I suppose I'm fortunate that I grew up with a mom who grew fruits and vegetables, who didn't buy much boxed food, who used natural cleaners for every day use and only brought out the Lysol on extreme occasions, and preserved food, kept chickens, and made our own Christmas cards.  We certainly were consumers but I grew up knowing where food came from and that antibiotics is something you only use when your health is in terrible danger and that washing your hands with them every day is bad for everyone.  We didn't need to be told that soap and water were enough.

So all this stuff seems normal to me.  You see how much hippies had their heads screwed on straight?

We'll skip all the sex, drugs, and Simon and Garfunkel for now.

I haven't bought sandwich zip locks since the beginning of the school year.  I keep washing them and reusing until they have holes in them or become really depressing looking.  I have finally come down to my last few that have already been reused and are looking sad.  I will have to buy a box.  (It's what Max's food goes into for lunch.  I tried using more durable tupperware but it stressed him out.  He's used to the bags and so I go with it.)

We're finally composting again and I'm so excited about it.  It's been bugging the crap out of me to throw good composting material into the trash, but you can't just pile compost in the yard when you have a dog like mine.  You must have bins that she can't root around in.  We brought our wire bins from the old house and are back in business.  It's such a relief to me!  If you have a yard there's no excuse not to compost.  Of course, I am keeping some kitchen scraps for making stock, some gets tossed to the hens, but there's always so much left.


Oh yes- I've been wanting to say this for days- Swine Flu...seems to me that the real culprit is factory farming.  Let's just cut that shit out.  What that means is: only buy from small farmers who take good care of their livestock, and eat less meat.

EAT LESS MEAT.

The alternative is that everyone stop having babies.

Those are the choices.  We can not responsibly feed the number of people on this planet so either everyone needs to stop having babies or they need to start being responsible for what food they buy and where it comes from. 

Overpopulation = Pandemic

(poor living conditions for animals/people, crammed people/animals, unhealthy animals/people, all these factors contribute to pandemics.)

It's not that simple but it's a model that has proven itself over the course of history.


Since I know that people are not going to stop having babies we must all be more responsible.  Meat from small responsible farms costs more money.  We are in a recession.  That means- EAT LESS MEAT.

Or it means grow your own meat. 

Or it means don't eat any meat.

What am I doing?  Well, I don't eat meat, but I do eat dairy.  So I have chickens for eggs (they live a pretty lush life) and when I need extra eggs I buy only cage free (though this can be misleading, doens't mean the birds get to have enough space for good health...but I have to at least try to do better than caged birds which is the worst of the worst).  I buy locally produced milk only (and I buy only hormone free products).  And when I can get my hands on it (VERY RARE) I buy milk from the local raw milk source we have in our county.


Oh, and while we're on the subject: FISH IS MEAT.

FISH IS FLESH=FISH IS MEAT

I'm very tired of seeing "meatless" meals feature tuna and other kinds of sea food.  If the food used to have skin and eyes and guts- it's flesh.  If it's flesh, it's meat.

Eating fish may be healthier than eating red meat, but they are all flesh.

And if you want to argue (to try and get under my skin) that eggs are meat too- I might agree with you.  They have no skin and no eyes, but they are the protein of an animal that has the potential to turn into another animal.  Eggs are certainly not dairy either as they used to be considered when I was a vegetarian kid in the 70's.  So while I consider myself a vegetarian as my mother and everyone else understood the word vegetarian to mean back before it became this complicated subject, or whether I am mostly a vegetarian but one who eats eggs...I don't know. 

I just know that when I was growing up there weren't five million different kinds of vegetarian.  Vegetarian simply meant no flesh.  I eat no flesh.

There.  It's been said. 


Wait- one more thing- never buy your produce, diary, or flesh from places like Walmart.  I shouldn't even have to say why.  Just don't do it.  If you do that?  Stop it.  Just stop it!  It is not worth it.  That is not a proper place or environment in which to procure the food that is supposed to nourish your body.  If you buy from those places you are spitting on yourself.  You are not caring for yourself properly.  If they put up chapels in Walmart would you use them to nourish yourself spiritually?  (Please don't anyone say yes to that!)

Food should be something you take care over, that you take time to prepare.  It should be enjoyed, revered, and come from wholesome places where dirt is full of microbes and worms and rich with nutrients.  If your food comes from pesticide covered fields then it is already half dead when it gets to you.  Food is a precious resource. 

This is why everyone should grow at least a little something for themselves, even if all they have is a kitchen windowsill.  To endeaver to grow something living that will in turn nourish your own body is a spiritual act if ever there was one and teaches us how dependent we are on the success of our plants.  I learned in my own garden one summer when I vowed to grow enough to not have to buy any vegetables (and succeeded!) for the whole season- that growing conditions, pests, and the soil itself all have to be dealt with and nurtured and seen to and when I grew that garden without the use of anything (I will sometimes use BHT or Neem type sprays, though rarely, this particular summer I used nothing) to deal with the bugs...

I spent my summer mornings handpicking the cabbage moth worms off of my cauliflowers and cabbages because suddenly I understood that it was them or me and this was food, not something frivolous, food to feed me and Philip.  I crushed those worms.  Normally I don't kill anything.  I don't believe in killing but when it's either starvation or killing worms- I choose to kill the worms.  Obviously, if my cauliflower had failed to crop I could always go to the store to buy some, but that wasn't the lesson.  The lesson was to feel what it feels like when we are living a hard working life in which earning our food is to grow it.

That was profound for me.  It connected me with all my farming ancestors.  (Yeah, I know, bummer that I'm not related to kings or Napolean, huh?  I cried, to be sure, because isn't everyone related to royalty?  Everyone but me.  Oh how I sobbed.*)  I felt how serious the production of food is.  How dependent us humans are on food production and how vulnerable that makes us.







*Not really.  I am very proud of my humble roots.  Having farmers for ancestors is what most of us have and there is nothing more honorable than that in my opionion.  I realize it's a little bit of reverse snobbery, but let me have it.  I also have fur trappers in my ancestry and I'm not so proud of that.