Meet your Meat...

OK...I'm a hypocrite. I'll be the first to admit it. A semi-recovering-half-assed- vegetarian-WHO DOES NOT WANT TO MAKE EYE CONTACT WITH MY FOOD! That's a reality of living in a rural farm community I'll never get used to, and have a bad case of 'not fitting in'. Seriously, this is a group I don't want to fit in with. I don't want to 'celebrate' the slaughter, I don't want to stand knee-deep in blood, and I certainly don't want to go to farm classes where you can learn how to kill a sheep or goat or pig or whatever. I know it's hypocritical. I know its shallow, and unrealistic. I don't care. I'm careful about the meat I consume- I just don't want to have a hand in killing it. There are all kinds of things around town to participate in,
This is the kind of thing I get emails about regularly; for example...

High Wire Ranch, 27497 Buffalo Rd., Hotchkiss, CO: Buffalo and Elk sausage / meat tasting - Farm Tours - Meet the animals!
Droste Chocolates from Eckert, CO
Wine Tasting by S. Rhodes Vineyards

Meat tasting, and Meet the animals. NO THANK YOU!
I do however, have a HUGE interest in the chocolate. It rocks. They have chocolates that rival See's, and some are dusted in gold. I get the chills just thinking about them. But...I digress.

I don't think it's all that 'healthy' to build a relationship with something you're going to kill and eat. Otherwise, it would be perfectly OK to knock off Fluffy and Fido- and it isn't. If it were, sit-coms and movies wouldn't constantly be playing up the trauma involved...so I would simply like to not be told I'm strange because the whole 'joy of the kill' thing gives me the ick.

I'm not about to go out and join PETA...they have a special talent in pissing people off, but for the life of me I don't know how you can bond with an animal, name it, care for it, and not get emotionally attached- and if you do get emotionally attached and kill it anyway, that seems even scarier.

I used to really hate the idea of hunting, but compared to taking out a cow or pig or sheep you've nurtured since infancy, it's starting to not sound so bad.

I've lost my wonderment with the earth-cookie folks around here who want to dance around and celebrate the kill.
Some of them really creep me out. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad if they didn't dress so weird, and give me the stink-eye when I run into them in the City Market and they notice that I have a box of Kraft Mac & Cheese in the grocery cart. For the record, I always try and hide the blue box under something organic. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Anyway...judgement goes both ways-and if I'm going to be judged about eating plastic mac & cheese, then I get to say what I think about getting friendly with your dinner before you lop its head off. It's whack.


I think there would be a whole lot more vegetarians out there if everyone had to kill their own food, because there are lots of hypocrites like me, and if people are honest, really honest, the killing part is very distasteful. Tell the truth- when you witnessed Sarah Palin gleefully beating the crap out of the halibut on her reality show, didn't you really want to slap her silly? I just saw a 30-second promo, and I wanted to knock her smug-shrill-half-gov-quitting ass right into the water, because she seemed to take such gusto in bashing the fish. Sick. She makes us feel for the fish. How about last year, when she was caught being totally oblivious to a turkey being slaughtered behind her, as she gave a PR speech for the camera. That got all kinds of attention...Why? Because it repulsed normal folk. That's all I'm saying...it's perfectly normal, and OK to be repulsed by the act of killing, blood, guts, etc. Even if it's just livestock.

The house my mother bought has a slaughterhouse behind the back fence. She didn't know it at the time she bought it, and one of the differences between California and Colorado is... um....zoning. Oh, yeah, and they way they deal with disclosure. She genuinely believed the big metal building was a game processing plant, until she was all moved in and the deliveries of cows, sheep, pigs and goats started at all hours- about two feet beyond her back fence. The activities that go on within earshot have made her totally revert back to her old vegetarian ways. Perhaps it runs in the family.

So I guess you could chalk this up as one of my 'uglies' for living in rural Colorado. Not so fast. The quality of the meat is way better than anything I could get easily in CA...even if it comes with a price. I think I"ll go make a nice salad.