Both my mother and father were great cooks. My father specialized in barbecue. My mother taught what was then called “home economics.” She taught at the college level and on the high school special education level. Home Economics included the art and science of meal preparation.Try as she might, she never could get me interested in cooking. With fast food takeout, I need cooking even less today.
I had no notion cooking was just for girls and knew that most professional chefs were men. It just was this boy wasn’t interested in spending time in the kitchen other than eating.
As an adult that didn’t change, but I did get somewhat interested in cooking outside. Often I found myself in situations where the women gathered for a communal feed were inside making salads and dessert, while the menfolk were trying to get the fire going under the meat.
Oh, the smell of barbecue. The sound of sizzling meat juices. The shoulder to shoulder communication that many men prefer, as the food roasted. Good memories indeed.
Then I had some fish that were swimming just before they got to the grill. I understood a new way to gastric delight. I never did a pig roast, but I fully understood the appeal.
My youngest son was fat from the time he was about four to twenty-four. I never called him fat, but he was. I was fine with him being fat, as I always could use to lose a few pounds myself. For the last ten years, my son has been ideally trim. Part of his story is his wife being vegan.
His wife thinks that human beings should treat animals much, much better than they do. That includes not taking their milk or their eggs. My son now follows the same belief.
When I first met my daughter-in-law to be and she told me she was vegan for the sake of animals, I told her one of my favorite riddles, “What part of an animal can you eat without bothering it at all?’ The answer, “ placenta.” Little did I know then that following the birth of my beautiful grandson, my daughter-in-law would take food supplements made from her placenta. The placenta is believed to be an excellent mood stabilizer for postpartum mothers.
Later I told her about my experience working on a chicken farm herding chickens. The way it was done is that a four-foot high net was erected on one side of the chicken barn. The chicken herders walked behind the chickens until they reached the net. What the chickens did at that point was to lie down. The next chickens to come along would lie on top of the chickens that were already down. Soon there was a wall of chickens several chickens high. The next task was to grab chicken feet fast enough to avoid them smothering to death. The chickens would then be passed off through an opening in the barn to the guys in the soup company truck.
The chickens were supposed to be all chickens, but occasionally a rooster egg would be missed. When you grabbed a rooster they would piss on you like a chicken. They were much better than the chickens at pecking the hand that was holding them. Roosters weren’t for soup. The boy that lived on the farm, not only liked to pick up chicken eggs out of the dung, poke a hole in them and suck out the contents, he also liked to dispatch the roosters by swinging them in the air and putting them out of their misery with a whip-like action.
I knew then the flimsy thin masks we were given weren’t any good in stopping the gag reflex from occurring when the stench of the chicken barn first hit. I learned they kept most of the chicken poop and small feathers out of your nose. It was about 42 years later that I learned the fungicides I huffed in that barn may have caused the Parkinson’s Disease that I developed. Perhaps this is chicken and rooster karma.
My son and my daughter-in-law made it quite clear I should feel free to eat meat while they ate their plants. I did so for years but then changed my mind out of respect for their beliefs. I just couldn’t go so far as to not consume eggs or dairy. I was never offered any placenta.
I did do some searching around in the Bible for guidance on how to eat but just got confused. I started out reading you should just eat plants with seeds. The idea the eaten would not mind, because the eater would help spread and fertilize the next generation of plants had its appeal. However, the Bible says it is fine to eat fish. One of my favorite Bible stories is when Jesus rose from the dead and went through walls to visit some apostles he greeted them by asking if they had anything to eat. They gave him a fish. I think He ate it.
Somewhere in the Bible, it says you can eat whatever you want, as long as have gratitude for the sacrifice the eaten has made to feed you. Other places it warns not to eat pork or shellfish. At least that is how I remember it. I tend not to read my Bible to know what I should be eating. It nourishes my soul for other reasons. Today my most perplexing issue with the Bible is Mandela Effect text changes. That, however, is for another article.
I have talked to guys who have worked in slaughterhouses. I have seen pictures of giant lakes of pig shit. Neither of which I find very appetizing.
Even organically grown, non-GMO, fair traded plant products are not free from all sorts of toxic chemicals, including those that are sprayed in the sky, throughout the world. Human beings tend to ignore the welfare of plants even knowing that the poisons we put on them will end up in us. We are great at pretending that we don’t know this.
So what is the point of this article? Good question. Thinking about how my meat consumption has informed my identity as a man is meaningful to me. If there is meat eating karma, I hope to be able to take it as a man. How about you?
Submit your carnivore story to The Good Men Project. Give others something to chew on. GMP editors are great at trimming unnecessary fat and gristle off of what you may be willing to serve up.
I wonder if GMP editors will recommend I lose the placenta references. I hope not.
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