In Praise of Pistachios: A Midieval Ballad

Is Andrew going vegetarian?

I might be going vegetarian. For now, I am giving it a pseudo-try. Partly because I do not want to eat meat right now, and partly because I am still traumatized by "Eating Animals". It is a well-written book in that it's goal was to educate me in a way completely polar to what my parents always said: oh what you don't know can't hurt you, or what you don't know isn't your fault, or they're just chickens, who cares? That sort of thing. Now I don't want to be one of these PETA type A-holes but I do think it would be fun to join PETA and wreak some social terrorism of a bloodier kind than I have to this date, and also, while this is a PETA type statement I'm going to say it anyway: Isn't that kind of thinking the same kind of thinking that allowed lots of Jewish people and lots of other nationalities since to get targeted for genocide? Now okay, it is just chickens, and pigs, and cows, but I do have a hard time accepting the grizzly details of their lives and deaths. I am also against genetic engineering and cloning, pretty much entirely, even though that puts me in league with the Republican jerks at work who say things like "Because of Obama! (his name for them must have an exclamation point, but a blood dripping vampire sharp exclamation point at all times), your health care benefits are taxable next year. (And I know dear readers, that you hate my asides, but do you know that I write only for myself and do not expect anyone to actually look at this and find it mildly alarming when I learn someone is reading it or anything else I have written? But I must go into this one little aside is all, just one honest, in this paragraph from here on out.) Isn't complaining about Obama! for screwing them over a little but not complaining about George W Bush (comic 1950s radio sock-hopper girl swoon sigh, as per required by Utah law) trying to screw everyone in America over by basically derailing the attempt since WW2 by all "developed" nations to provide health care and retirement benefits to all by privatizing social security (something the oil sleezebags have been after since Eisenhower: funny quotes from Eisenhower's diary regarding the oil men who thought he was in their pocket, might wanna check into it sometime) a little insane? I mean so basically they think Obama! is a terrible president for being a good enough president to be able to wrangle through his legislation, and Bush (dreamy nostalgic sigh) is a great president for being so ineffective and clueless and despicable in his second term that he couldn't bang through his legislation and agenda even though his party largely has ruled the world for several decades? Reason Number 2 that I might join a time share condo cult in Colorado. Yeah.

I do feel bad for chickens too, and the book "Eating Animals" was devastatingly well-written in that it might have made me become vegetarian, or at least to give it a whirl the last two weeks. But it was badly written in that it was so graphic and depressing and relentless that I felt the author was trying to hold my head under a pool of blood at the end not with the aim of saving animals but with punishing all of mankind and especially me even though he admits he regularly gets off the vegan bandwagon to pop a cheeseburger. So someone without my shall we say, 17th century macho and masochistic attitude and tolerance might just wind up killing themself if they listen to the whole audio book without break, falling into a depression they will never kick. Right, chickens. I do feel bad for them. I would not want to wake up from a taser shock to find myself hanging upside down by the ankles and an automated throat slasher bluntly and badly hacking my throat so that I slowly and painfully bled to death while then being boiled alive and having my skin peeled off again while still alive before my head was torn off- or worse. I assume that must make a chicken who isn't already crazy from its confined life go crazy, and it would make me go crazy to see my former neighbors and well the whole city of Chicago say being gutted and blood everywhere and so forth, on endless horrid sharp saw-toothed assembly lines, but then again, and here is the rebuttal: aren't they just chickens or cows? I mean I was just at the state fair and I have to be honest maybe the growth-hormone pumped cows were lumbering and breathing heavy and covered with sores but throw them some hay and they seem content to just poop all over themselves while eating at the same time, and do they really have it worse than Americans anyway? In "Eating Animals" the author argues that livestock and poulty are in constant pain from being so overweight and pumped full of drugs. Um, did he just not notice the irony or is he not paying attention while driving around? I have coworkers who waddle and need a candy bar from the overpriced vending machines every hour and a jolt of coffee every other break and a cigaratte every break period and most of them are on at least one kind of anti-depressant. And I do feel bad for turkeys too bloated to have sex who need to be artifically inseminated but again, I mean in our society nobody is too keen on blimp people, so don't ever more Americans decide, you know, rather than an athletic and active life including nights in the boudoir with rosepedals and gymnastics, I'm going to go ahead and bury my face in this gross salty fast food deep dish pizza that tastes like styrofoam and make myself so unattractive no one will touch me then complain that I am lonely and that Sandra Bulluck or Leo DeCaprio is shallow and doesn't want a penniless obese diabetes-riddled slob like me. And zoos and factory farms are awful, I am sure, and confined. But don't people spend several hours a day by choice in cars? And eight hours in cubicles? And most of the rest of their time under a roof with doors closed? Man I'm not so sure the animals we eat have it worse than us, it seems more like the deal always was we ate them and they shared our life, and we fed them and protected them until the time that we ate them. No foxes, just us. We used to have acres of land, so did they. Now we are boxed up in cities and apartments, so are they. I am not a fan of my own modern life, and hey sure I could try moving to Montana but you don't have to move to the city, the city will move to you (the great Modest Mouse wrote that). I think most animals would eat themselves to exploding if they could and I've personally had lots of friends who eat when bored or will keep stuffing chips in their mouth without noticing until they get sick. Its pretty gross.

No the more convincing argument that got me, and here it comes for you too, is this: that 30 foot deep piles of manure are horrible polluters, that these companies exploit immigration and guarantee no one will ever solve illegal immigration because they need a workforce that can be kept afraid, be made to disappear and that cannot talk, that it is possibly producing the next super killer epidemics (did you know all flu viruses come from birds originally?), and provide such an inferior contaminated product that they inject their meat with colored dyes and broths (not sure where these master broths come from if the meat we make everything including broths comes from is no good anymore) and huge amounts of salt to create something like flavor, or at least, to hide the smell and taste of feces that they fail to wash off. Actually chicken is all stored in vats of water to cheat you further and to make sure every piece of every cut is contaminated as much as possible (oh wait the second part is an accident). See chicken will soak up waste water and feces that then do not have to be dealt with as you will eat it and effectively store it for the company. Cute huh? As long as the meat or poulty is less than 11.5% total feces and fluid, its all legal. Having your angry disgrunted exploited workers urinate on the chicken also causes it to soak up water which then inflates the price, since it is sold per pound, P.S. So its more like the opposite of washing off, instead they pollute and contaminate it more to increase their margins. Oh and we foot the bill for cleaning up all these problems so the real price of meat is just hidden, it isn't cheap at all. But you knew that one. I bet you did not know that specifically Smithfield, the biggest slaughterhouse there is had 7,000 envionmental violations in one single year which they happily paid out in total fines of 12.7 million dollars. These environmental damages will probably cost we, the tax payers, somewhere closer to 12 billion. Good deal for both sides right. Man am I glad I can get that Wendy's 99 cent chicken-like substance sandwhich though.

So for now, I am not missing meat. We will see if that continues or not. I have always missed it in the past, but I baked some breads this week- lemon poppy seed zucchini bread with slivered almonds on top and cucumber-apple-rye-and oat bread with crushed walnuts on top- and made my first pesto (lacklusterly delicious. In that it was delicious but not nearly as good as Pasta Jay's's pesto I had the other week), and my first hummus (disgusting mostly, but then maybe I don't like hummus. I'm not sure. Either that or I did something wrong.) I also fried zucchinis and ate plenty of my favorite, three colored roasted herb potatoes. I am still drinking milk, and I am less clear on how to get that from dairies I know are not evil. And I did put eggs in the bread and supposedly those are not evil since I paid $3 for a dozen of them and they are brown, but I don't trust company labels anymore so I am reading up about egg companies out here right now. I think maybe meat cheffery is just lazy though. Did I touch in my last ramblings on how there ought to be a few cooking shows at least that don't use meat or resort to, here is some sapon, it tastes like meat, recipes? You would think some chefs would want to step up to the challenge and really get creative to fill a whole season of shows without any roast ducks or veal cutlets. I am finding there is a lot of variety one can begin craving simply by creating the void I have by deciding, I'm not going to defrost that pork loin to cover the weekend. And its exciting that the next time some sheltered Mormon says something to me like (I swear to the Mormons' God: you can't make this stuff up: "oh no I've never seen a silent movie but I've wanted to. I've been meaning to break out of my comfort zone and try new things", as if you just asked them, "would you like to watch a porno with me" or "would you like to have a threesome with me and that mountain goat over there?" or they think "Charlie Chaplin" is a mostly forgotten slang term for a man's shall we say masculenity?) you drink beer?! With a sneer as if I just said I didn't think Obama looked like a monkey or was a terrorist or cracked open coffins at night to violate the dead (lot of racists out here in Utah- enough to make one want to move to Colorado, the first state to ban "gestation pens" for hogs and "veal boxes" (look them up or watch the South Park episode about veal for more information- as fast as possible, even if you have to join a time-share condo cult to do it) I can reply yes I drink beer, do you meat!? And then I can go on a tirade right back at them about how they personally torture baby animals and are the devil. And then what can they say to that, other than Hitler was a vegetarian? Oh man with all the beers and wines in the world would you really miss meat either if you decided to drink more to make up for your non meat eating?

The thing is, I do not want to be a vegetarian. I do not want to be defined by my eating at all. I don't like that I was a "health nut" at work in my group right away because I pack my own snacks such as trail mix. Maybe I just don't like Little Debbie cupcakes at 4 am. And I do not want to be a vegetarian when I meet people. I try to avoid all definition. This is Andrew. I am not even into that when people introduce me as such. Its a bit specific isn't it? I certainly do not want to be This is Andrew, he's a vegetarian. That will lead to a lot of annoying conversations that must be dispensed with before I can become a person or say something clever. And I see myself as a lot of things before a potential or even investigative or contemplative vegetarian, but none of them as attention-catching and so none of them as attachable to my introduction. So maybe I will just be an omnivore who does not eat meat except at Christmas or something. I mean is anyone going to keep tabs of me at Christmas? People are doing their own thing. Also, I shouldn't probably be talking about this yet, on Day 13 of sort of not eating meat for a while because I haven't felt like it, because I will probably now wind up going to bed (well floor, I go to floor as I do not have a bed) and dreaming about dripping red london broil, although that sounds gross at the moment (a good sign in being a vegetarian if I am going to be one). Well its like a baseball hit streak. The record is Joe Dimmagio's 56 game hit streak. It is considered the most unbreakable of baseball records by many. And I think it becomes more unbreakable all the time. A lot of people get to 30 games without anyone noticing, but once half way, the oppressive, scavenger media comes in huge droves demanding press conferences after every game with the player in question to pound him with stupid questions like "Do you think you'll beat Joe Dimaggio's 56 game hit streak next month on such and such a date?". These are stupid because if the streak continues they just ask it again the next night and the next night and the next night after that until he just wishes he was dead and because the most famous superstition in baseball is never talk about a hit streak or a no hitter with the hitter or pitcher until its over. It jinxes them, it makes them unable to just do what they have been doing and puts extra magnitude on each pitch. The player in the zone is no longer just going about his business but is pressing to keep the hot streak going. Lots of guys get to 30 games, and few get much farther. The pressure and attention is too much. A guy can't just avoid the newspaper anymore. There is no chance of not being assaulted constantly with his own success. Joe Dimaggio's hit streak is safe. And the parallel to myself is I don't want to try to be vegetarian. I want to just eat what I want. If I don't want fish or meat, that's kind of great isn't it? But I don't want to mark days off my calendar as if detoxing, or get constant questions from anybody, like "did you go fry up some catfish yet?" I don't want pressure of trying to make it some distance like there was a goal in mind from the beginning or I am carrying Ghandi's torch. So I should not be talking about this, at least, until I'm 55 days into not eating meat, if I go that far. Even though 13 days is the longest I ever mostly went without meat or animal stock cubes or anything in my spoiled middle-class American life and that is sad to me for a lot of reasons. And also I probably won't because there is a lot of frozen meat around I will need to use eventually. I am not going to have let some poor animal's life be in vain. Although I could give it all away, with little cards that read things like: "Here is three pounds of ground beef I decided I did not want because the typical e-coli count in ground beef in this, the safest country in history ever in so many ways, is ____ and that is too many zeroes for me to be comfortable with and also it is probably by volume around 4% fecal matter and 10% re-constituted ash and there is a 20% chance this beef comes from a cow who's legs were sawed off at the kneecap while it was still alive after having been skinned alive in a 15 minute ordeal so read into whether I like you or despise you as you please from my giving you this tasty present and if you decide you don't want it either pass it on to some big loud-mouth redneck you know will love it either because you love him or hate him as you see fit, but don't let this poor animal's life go in vain. Thanks." That might be fun, I'm not going to lie.

Now onto the pistaccio part of the blog. You know I love pistaccios in a good sweet marinara sauce, and with goat cheese or just as a snack. How fun to peel them. But they can also replace very expensive pine nuts in a pesto. I used pistaccios with arugala and basil and olive oil to create a basic decent first crack at pesto sauce. And they go deliciously in a blend of wild rice and vegetables and lentils and beans. They are just soft enough to add crunch and a little pop when you bite them without hurting your teeth, and will hold their flavor and do not absorb others. So they are like an exotic visitor in any dish. But what does not go good in rice? Brown rice with cinammon and cardammon and apricots or mangos. White rice with cinammon and raisins and baked with a hint of vanilla. Long grain and wild rice with anything, like corn and tomatoes, and carrots and so on. No I have not missed meat yet, though still freshly picturing it as disease-carrying torture cutlets helps I am sure. But honestly, with a diet rich in cereals and with staples like rice and pasta at your disposal, would you miss meat much? Ugh I've become the kind of convert who is over-diligent and tells everyone how much they ought to love Jesus even though he still is sore from all the lot loving Jesus he did for twenty-five years before finding Jesus while in the gutter trying to get over a hangover or the pulled hamstrings from not loving Jesus so religiously and so recklessly. I hate those guys. So this will be the last sneak attack against meat for a while. Oh yeah and fish are mostly farm raised in water so filthy they often have their faces eaten off by bacteria and water lice and are probably in much more pain and suffering than land animals, but, they don't have expressive eyes or faces so nobody cares. And even deep sea fish go through hours of pain and trauma when caught, though I have my doubts as to fish intelligence and thus, how far fish pain can go.

And I am not really against meat or fish, so long as you know the food pyramid is a crock and the USDA is charged with protecting consumers in a way that promotes industry, which is certainly a conflict of interest not in your favor, that you don't need meet at all, and that there are better options for the environment and animals. I decided a few hours after being pushed to the ledge to jump by the author of "Eating Animals"who ended his book by pointing out that Bill Neimen, the founder of the only national chain of food that promised ethical treatment of all their animals, was forced out of his own company so his former friends and partners could start instituting the more profitable and less ethical methods used by factory farms, that is I say, I decided to use the powerful research tool of the internet to see if I could find a meat source I approved of in a much more hopeful and resilient mood than the book tried to leave me in (or did he want to push me to the edge of sanity and exhaustion so I could rise like a phoenix?) and it only took about 30 seconds. I looked up local businesses and quickly found several options that promise you can come look at their farm and view their animals and the pens and habitats anytime and promise no hormones, mistreatment and so on. And they promise it will taste better than any meat you can get elsewhere, which I believe. Although, like I say, and as I have heard several vegetarians including Camila tell me, I just don't miss meat so far. We'll see how long that continues. Let's tab this up as entry one in an experiment and not a preaching show. I do think everyone needs to know what they are eating and I am ever less patient with the attitude I get at work and from friends of, oh I can't do anything about it, so I don't want to know. Number one, we can all do something about it. Its very easy. Number 2, the first thing you can do about it, is know. "Food Inc" spread that as one of its final messages too. Once you know, tell someone else- I was raised eating meat every day and was told food was safe from the grocery store. The pictures on the label show cartoon farmers and cartoon barns and cartoon smiling cows. Had I been told at say age 8, you can go on eating meat but you have to watch this video of where it comes from if you do, I think I might have gone a different way early on. Had I known 4 years ago that food comes from a few evil companies and there are few farmers left, I might have begun changing then. I feel a little bitter towards my parents for not knowing what they were feeding me and not caring, and towards the whole system and towards myself for not questioning it, but don't we accept the world we are presented? Who would assume that food is really polluted and cruel and full of chemicals and so on. That's what the FDA and USDA are supposed to be for. It feels natural to trust that until someone clues you in not to. So clue someone in, perhaps, if you feel like it. Anyway we're back on the soap box, so that's enough for this week.