(cookies can be vegan, oh yes!)
Kate and Jim live down the road, and they are the bee's knees, our good pals. They comment here often, and have spent a small fortune on my pots.
Kate writes:
"I thought today about your uncomfortableness with x-rays. (Not that I desire extra radiation in my body and I try to keep it to a minimum myself). But we note that you're very health conscious. (I know that you're lactose intolerant which explains alot of your diet choices)
When I was younger I had adopted a somewhat vegetarian diet. I'd go on and off it every couple of years. The past 20 or so, I've been off. So my question basically is when and what made you and Maude decide to become vegetarian (other than dairy allergies). It is a lifestyle, and one that takes a bit of extra thought, menu planning, etc.
If this is too personal, let me know. I was just intrigued. Was it a gradual process, or had you both been of like mindedness when it came to this?
Nosey - aren't I??? :-)
Kate"
Well, Kate. Lemme explain. Everybody in my family seems to be lactose intolerant, so I stay away from dairy. It makes me very sick. Like I had some potato chips last week, and later looked at the label, after I felt like cr#p, and discovered, of course, that they had dried milk in them. Believe me, I'd eat ice cream and cheese etc if I could.
I am health conscious? Hmmmm. Maybe a little. When I was 16, a long time ago, I read Sinclair's "The Jungle", about slaughter houses, and said 'that's it Mom, no more meat!'. Listen, I can see little fishies or deer living the good life in the wild, and one day they are caught and boom! Dead and eaten. No big deal. BUT, the majority of our meat and poultry comes from disgusting factory farm conditions where there is a tremndous amount of suffering, including some nasty processes for killing and packaging. There is what? Salmonella and e coli in there too? I don't want to eat another animal, and so I don't. My stomach is just not interested.
Now, this blog actually rarely has much that is personal, actually, and I am happy that all my friends eat what they want to eat. That's their business and I don't care. I will not ask people to do as I do, and I won't even discuss it unless I am asked.
It just happens to be a fairly healthy diet. As for radiation and xrays, it just seems like the darn dentist always wants xrays, and the heck with it!!!!!!!! What is it, 70 bucks, and they don't show anything the last set didn't show????? I don't want to tell the dentist what to do, but hey, minimal head xrays, please.
9 comments:
Note to self -
- Read Sinclair's 'The Jungle'.
- Rethink that chicken I was going to have.
- Be careful what you write to Gary, he'll post every darn thing. :D
(I feel like Lis - ha!)
As I say, what my friends do is their business, I am not interested in bothering anybody!
--and the wife has also noticed that most everything seems to get blogged...
I was vegetarian for most of my adult life, from choice. Then, suddenly my system upped and demanded meat! I obliged but only in small quantities, and always the best quality raised and butchered stuff--which means humanitarian so far as it can be done. Now, I'm drifting away from meat again, having discovered ways of cooking pulses that my auld tummy can handle. Dif'rent strokes!
Bridget's uncle was vegetarian (he's a Buddhist), but has been having iron and mineral trouble, so he's been adding a bit more to his diet.
Gary, I hear you on the factory-farm thing. They're terrible. My in-laws, being very poor non-factory farmers, have been a great source of information to me over the years. They're also a great source of non-factory animal products. In fact, the family farm has been a certified organic dairy operation for three years.
Not everyone has a farm connection for these things, though.
C is for cookie, that's good enough for me!!
Seriously, while I *am* a sugar addict, I wasn't going to just leave it at that!
My DH is very health-conscious (much more so than yours truly) and he has been a very good influence on me for over 21 years now.
We've never tried to hide reality from the boys. When the oldest ones were little, they wanted to know what they were eating: "What's this?" "Pork." "What animal does it come from?" "It's pig meat." "Oh. OINK!!" ...and then they'd giggle!!!
Our nurse practictioner was vegetarian and he was so sure that if kids knew that their hamburgers came from cows that said "MOO" they'd never eat hamburgers! My oldest kids proved him wrong.
I remember being a kid on my uncle's farm, helping to feed the Nancy the pig, and then later helping to eat the pig. My uncle made sure we knew what we were eating. (Sorry, I really don't mean to gross anyone out.) I considered it a good education.
It is important to know where your food comes from and your own individual place on "the food chain."
Along comes my 4th son. He actually turns green when meat is discussed like that. And I've told him that if he is willing to eat a healthy vegetarian diet, I am willing to serve it to him. He is not quite to that point yet (too picky about beans and such) and he needs his protein.
On a side note, when Encyclopedia Blue was very young, he was allergic to dairy AND soy proteins (along with other things). As he was a nursing baby, I also had to give up quite a few foods. It was a wonderfully successful and healthy diet. He did outgrow those food allergies --a tremendous blessing for us all!-- and he is my most adventurous eater. (Someday I must blog about this!)
Gord, when we watch movies of old farms which have a tidy little barn with ten cows and 5 pigs and 3 chickens out in the sunshine, you know that that is a type of ideal farming--where animals are just there for a family and are well kept for their lives--but it has become rare.
KC....maybe you don't need your blog, you're writing so much over here! Ha!
I agree that factory farms are wrong in sooo many ways and that is all I will say about eating habits.
As for your x-rays, would you rather the dentist caught a small cavity as it was forming, or have a root canal after it has been decaying for a few years? Or an extraction and a false tooth or many false teeth?
that's what the dentist says, Reb, but dangit, ever year? No.
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