Kill Your Food...Or Not

(So I was out of town this weekend and lost my assignment sheet. That doesn't really excuse the lateness of this post, but I might as well contribute as best I can. So here it is, for your reading pleasure.)

The idea of hunting has never been one that appealed to me. It's not so much a moral stance, it's just not having a desire to kill anything. Everything has been available in my local grocery store (or national chain) so I don't really need to. But I can appreciate the hunters who do so for food, to claim the animal and use it for a number of purposes such as food or clothing or anything else they can do to waste as little of the animal as possible. That is understandable, if you want to grow your own vegetables or hunt your own food, who am I to stop you? As long as you stay within the confines of the law, you should be able to do as you please.

Where hunting does get iffy for me is in the sport of it. To essentially waste an animal, killing it solely for sport, seems unnecessary. Meat, and the animals we get it from, should be respected enough not to be wasted for fun. And this is coming from someone who understands that some do find real pleasure and fun from hunting. I've never done it, nor do I interact with those who do very often, but I do know people enjoy all sorts of things that I don't do, so I can deal with it. But there is so much you can do with a hunted animal, which includes putting it to good use.

Outside of that, I do find something appealing in harvesting food for oneself. There is a pride in doing so, in making a way for yourself, by yourself. Growing your own food seems like an interesting lifestyle, even when it includes raising animals to butcher and eat. The food chain, with us at the top, allows us to consume animals and plants, so why not do so? Of course, I side with those who would not want to be cruel to animals, but treat them with enough respect. The same goes for raising them, because they are beings that feel... I will only eat them because, like them, we are designed to eat certain things. I'm not one to question that, in fact, I embrace some of human's base animal instincts.

Harnack, Andrew. Animal Rights: Opposing Viewpoints. San Diego, CA: Greenhaven Press, 1996. Print.

Ogden, Samuel. How to Grow Food for Your Family. New York, NY: A.S. Barnes, 1942. Print.

To Hunt or Not to Hunt

Growing up I had a strong sense of right and wrong with respect to animals: anything that hurt them was wrong. Even when I would watch movies as a child I remember my mother trying to comfort me as I sobbed after a horse was killed in a western shoot out. Silly as that may be I still have a fondness for animals that might make you think I would be against eating them, but this is not the case. I was raised eating chicken and beef and when I was about ten and discovered that “beef” came from cows it saddened me, but didn’t stop me from begging my mom to take me to McDonald’s.

My mom raised me in a poor area in Los Angeles County yet always managed to keep us out of apartment living. We always had a house and always had pets, so when she announced she wanted to start a dairy farm I was all for it!! I didn’t realize how much effort it took to actually care for animals other than cats and dogs. Dairy goats have to be milked twice a day (at least) even if you have no need for all the milk, if you don’t milk them they will stop producing it. As you may remember I was opposed to goat milk from the start, and you can imagine my shock when my mother had one of the older goats butchered for meat!! It was hard to know that our oldest goat Aphrodite was in separate packages marked ground meat in the freezer but when my mom actually made spaghetti with her I couldn’t handle it. She begged me to try it, and after fighting to no avail I did. I was not impressed. I could tell it was different, but not in the same disgusted way I could tell with the goat milk. It was different, but not gross. I never ate goat again, mostly because I’ve considered them pets and it is hard to think of them otherwise.

Harvesting your own food is good for not only the environment but also for your own health in knowing the diet and the treatment of the plant or animal you are going to consume. It is definitely advantageous to have a stronger connection with your food; it makes you waste less because it is more meaningful. It is an investment of time, money, sweat and sometimes even blood, so the final product on your dinner plate has more meaning then shelling out twenty bucks for a prepackaged piece of meat that is so far removed from the animal it was originally, without a label it would be unrecognizable.

We like to think that we are more civilized than we were 200, 100, even 50 years ago. But a lot of the problems we have with overconsumption and unfair distribution of food and wealth come from not having direct contact with the food and the environment that make our lives worth living. It is not only moral to hunt for food, if it were the rule instead of the exception to the rule we wouldn’t have many of the problems we face today. Granted I would have a hard time with it at first, but like anything that was meaningful, with hard work and determination the benefits would far outweigh the costs.

I think there are valid arguments on both sides so I’m recommending two books with opposing viewpoints…..

Swan, A. James. In Defense of Hunting. HarperSanFransisco, 1995. P

Bronner, J. Simon. Killing Tradition: Inside Hunting and Animal Rights Controversies. U Press of Kentucky, 2008. P

If You Can Stomach It...

For those who can stomach it, I think hunting your own food is a great idea. I think hunting for food increases awareness on a whole score of issues that many people today aren't able to deal with (myself included). Not only are you positive where your food came from, but you're also conscious of how much pain the animal experienced, how healthy it looked, etc. One aspect I really like of hunting one's own meat is that you can control how much of the animal is wasted. I think people who make the effort to use every part of the animal are quite admiral; they're ensuring that the life of the animal didn't go to waste.

In our modern culture, we are so far removed from the source of our food it's pretty unbelievable. The more our food technology advances, the more detached we become from our food. I know I certainly value my detachment from the animal that I'm consuming, but at the same time, I'm probably causing the poor creature much more pain and strife by purchasing its meat from a grocery store than from killing it myself. I am especially aware of my detachment from food because a few years ago, my guilt about eating animals consumed me and I became a vegetarian. I gave it up after a year and a half (and, ironically, enjoy meat more now that I ever did before), but I am also aware of the fact that I avoid at all costs knowing the source of my protein. If I had to look into the eyes of the creature I wished to consume, I would never be able to eat its flesh. I think it is noble of those who can; they are living in a much more natural realm than those of us who are squeamish about killing animals. People who hunt for their own food are reaching out to the fundamental circle of life that so many of us have lost.

I thought the article about Escoffier's Guide Culinaire was quite interesting. I think it's cool that the author has a network of people that hunt their own food and trade it amongst one another. Although it was kind of disgusting to read about how some of the food is made, I think it was an enriching experience nonetheless. I think hunting for one's own food is perfectly justifiable, certainly more so than purchasing a package of meat in a grocery store. I think the only humans who are truly justified in consuming meat in the first place are those who hunt their own food, after all, they are the only ones who can deal with the moral consequences of the act. The rest of us (once again, myself included) just sit back and let others do the dirty work for us. If everyone hunted their own food, we would certainly be a lot healthier, and we would senselessly murder so many less animals than we do now.

Jackson, Alison. I Know an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Pie. New York: Dutton Children's Books, 1997. Print.

Rubin, Lawrence. Food for Thought: Essays on Eating and Culture. Jefferson: McFarland, 2008. Print.

Harvesting Food

After reading the articles "The Scavenger's Guide to Haute Cuisine" and "The Urban Deerslayer" my views of hunting have changed someone. I had never really thought about hunting as a necessity and rather a sport for two reasons. First, I never saw it as necessary when you could walk into a grocery store and get meat from animals who have already been killed for that purpose, for humans to consume. Second, hunting always seemed to be more of a sport. People seem to get so much joy out of hunting and it seemed to me that they turned it into more of a party than was necessary.

The authors of both articles helped me to see things from a different perspective. I never had though about the satisfaction one would get from harvesting their own food, and the connection it would give to the food. How much more you would appreciate the animal you were eating if you were the one who had killed it. Although I had previously seen hunting as immoral because their is already so much meat at grocery stores, I never really thought of people hunting out of necessity because they may not have enough money to purchase meat from a grocery store. In one of the articles the author mentions that for the price of a hunting license (I believe it was around forty dollars or so) he could keep his family fed for almost a year.

Hayes, Ruth. Gluttony. Seattle: Random Motion, 1985.

Regguinti, Gordon, and Dale Kakkak. The Sacred Harvest: Ojibway Wild Rice Gathering. Minneapolis: Learner Publications, 1992.

Give Me Your Best Shot

As I read "Waiter, There's a Cloven Hoof on my Plate," I wondered what the most disgusting food I've ever eaten was. And even after, I'm having a hard time picking one out, and not because there are so many, but because there are so little. In my previous post, I mentioned how I love trying new things, any kind of food is fair game, as long as it is commonly accepted by other cultures and countries. So, as of now, I don't have a most disgusting food, and any foods I'm not in love with is likely due to not liking it more than other things, but I'd still eat them if they were in front of me.

For my culture, whatever that means, there are many foods that may seem strange, even though they are commonly eaten by other American's. The rural south has a number of dishes people from our "area" or "culture" might shake their head at, but in that area of America, it's perfectly acceptable. It seems, generally, that American's as a whole avoid meat products of any animal that may resemble a pet. And, in my experience, people tend to avoid foods of a certain texture, though the range and diversity is so large, it's hard to pin down what is acceptable and what is not. If you ask me, it is indeed all psychological, and anyone could eat anything if they 1) didn't know what it was, or 2) were raised in a different environment.

The psychological aspect is what keeps certain people from trying new foods or finds vegetarians believing that a sliver of meat just touching their tongue will make them sick. Not to offend, though it shouldn't if thought about, the very idea is ridiculous. There isn't anything stopping them, from a biological standpoint at least, and to insist otherwise would be, in all likelihood, wrong. There are exceptions to every rule, but the vast majority cannot escape it. Food is food and meat is meat. There are certain foods that exceed disgusting and venture into undigestible territory, but no culture eats those things anyway. Gross is a relative term, which means something different to everyone. For me, the line is far ahead, which leaves me the opportunity to try all sorts of interesting and delicious dishes. Bring on the balut.

"Weird Food & Strange Food from Around the World."Weird Food. N.p., 2008. Web. 13 Apr 2010. .

I Can Tell the Difference

While reading the article “Waiter there’s a cloven hoof on my plate”, along with trying to read through the article without turning away in disgust (which seemed a little silly since I wasn’t looking at anything other than words), I tried to think of the grossest thing I’d ever eaten. This was extremely challenging since I am not the least bit adventurous with my diet. There are foods like tripe (sheep stomach) and menudo (cow stomach), which are essentially absent from the American diet, but in Ireland and Mexico they are said to be great hangover cures. I have been offered a variety of foods that people around me eat everyday including sushi, oysters, calamari, and even duck. Although I wasn’t brave enough to let many of these even touch my lips, I did place a bite of duck in my mouth…although that’s as far as it got so I cannot claim to have actually eaten it. Regardless of what my stepmother claims duck is not like a gourmet chicken. Eatable, delicious, and disgusting vary from culture to culture and household to household so it must be psychological if food can be so many different things to so many different people.

Due to the fact that I have always been a finicky eater it was hard to think of a time where I was forced to consume something that I didn’t choose, and then it hit me: goat’s milk. When I was about 12 my mom decided to get into organic farming and raise her own chickens and goats, for fresh eggs and milk. My brother and I weren’t too excited about the idea of goat’s milk especially since we loved cow’s milk so much that we would drink about a gallon a day between us. From cereal in the morning to two big glasses with lunch and dinner we could have been the poster children for the milk industry. My mother explained the nutritional value was far greater in goat’s milk than cow’s and how the money saved will benefit the family. Valid arguments but they fell on deaf ears; remember we were too young to care. We protested about the smell and the taste and the yellow color and the thick consistency, it looked more like eggnog than milk unfortunately the similarity ended there. At first my mother compromised and bought cow’s milk and pasteurized her own goat’s milk until one day when she’d had enough and claimed we couldn't even tell the difference. She refused to spend any more money on milk and said all of our concerns were “psychological” and we needed to get over them. For a few weeks neither side budged, so my mother resorted to trickery. She poured the goat’s milk into the empty gallon milk container, and I was the unfortunate victim of this hennas act. I poured the milk perfunctorily as I wondered through my morning routine, my mother watched anxiously…I took a bite and then another. I turned to my mother and said the milk must have gone bad and she flipped out. “It’s psychological” she cried, “you had two bites before you looked at the container and saw it was yellow”! Actually I had a bite, then a second to see if it was me, then I looked at the container to see how bad the milk actually was because clearly something was wrong. To this day my mother swears “it’s psychological” and we never opened ourselves up to the experience. It’s a funny story to tell to newcomers, but it remains the grossest thing I’ve ever eaten.

Pickled Pig's Skin

The weirdest thing I've ever eaten was pickled pig's skin. My cousin bought it from the grocery store when we were in Ensenada, Mexico. It came in a milk jug filled with vinegar. The skin itself was in small pieces, similar in shape to french fries. It didn't taste like much, except for the pickling flavor, though the texture was pretty disgusting. I tried not to think about it while it was going down. Other than that, I haven't tried a wide variety of odd foods. I'm much more open to the idea of eating weird animals than weird animal parts; I don't think I'd be able to stomach eating penis, liver, or any internal part of an animal.

It's very interesting how one animal can be considered a delicious, common meal in one culture and be sacred in another, and even how different parts of animals are cherished or avoided, depending on the cultural context. I definitely think the phenomenon is all psychological, but I also think it's something we cannot avoid. Our food preferences are ingrained into us from the cultures in which we live, and although we can be open minded, I don't think it's possible to completely leave behind our cultural influences. Even if I liked the taste of it, I would have a very hard time eating dog or cat because I grew up with these animals as pets who were cherished, and I am not able to separate the food from the memories of my pets. I do wonder how some delicacies (like chicken shitholes) become popular in the future, but it kind of grosses me out to picture people testing out different parts of animals, so I try not to think about it. Still, the realization that growing up in American led me to favor chicken thighs or breasts, when my food preferences could have been shaped vastly differently if only I had been born somewhere else, is a very interesting thought, indeed.

Website:

"Weird Food & Strange Food from Around the World." Weird-food.com. 2008. 10 Mar. 2010 .