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Friday 18 January 2013

Do you know what you're eating?

Well, me and my Miss 13 have been looking forward to tomorrow ALL winter :)
SNOW is forecast for this part of Dorset (along with most of the rest of the country I might add!)
I do like snow. I think it's because it always reminds me of my childhood.

Snow used to pour down outside; great big huge flakes that settled and gave you loads of hours of snowballing and sledging fun on big black sacks. (Along with a sore bum after, freezing red chapped legs and a real struggle to get your soaking wet jeans off!)
You remember don't you? :D 
Oh, but then you settled down in front of the roaring open fire with a nice hot cup of chocolate, the toasting fork, wedges of uncut bread to toast on the fire, the salt celler and.....erm.....the-dripping-bowl -to-spread-cold-animal-fat-on-your-toast with a sprinkling of salt after...Yummy (at the time!)
Saying it quickly, it doesn't sound so yuck now. LOL

I've been a vegetarian for about 18years now - since my early twenties, and some of the things I used to eat in my childhood just don't sound nice to me now. Except I do know that everything I had was home cooked, and half the time, home killed as well.
My dad used to breed rabbits for us to eat, we had pheasants, brawn (pigs brain ..Urgh..) pigs trotters, whelks, winkles. And all manner of things that I now think yuk too.
But the point is, you actually knew what you were eating!
We never had 'fancy' stuff like beefburgers, lasagne, bolognese. But we did have home made mince meat in shephards pie and the like. -You know, good old fashioned English food.

I had 'older' parents who had lived through WW2. My dad being in the navy, and my mum being evacuated to Wales.
We always had a larder filled with homemade jams and jellies, chutneys and pickles.
A garden full of home grown veg. (Gardens were bigger then too, so most of the time in the country you didn't need an allotment).
There wasn't anything that was wasted at all.

We had big chest freezers full of food. Most of it was in big lumps of meat, fish and preserved veggies for the winter from the garden.  Two exceptions of 'fancy' food were baked beans, and fish fingers.( I had them round a friends house once when I went for tea, and begged my mum for them after that :)

I'm not really sure whats promted this post, except for maybe a couple of articles in the news lately.
The first article is that as humans on this planet, we waste a staggering 2billion tons of food a year.
When I think how I grew up, I was the most wasteful finicky child out (I mean do you blame me? Come on, there are only so many rabbit stews, pigs brain and pigs trotters one young girl can eat!! lol).
My dad was forever telling me how 'children in Africa would fight over my left overs", and my retort was for him to send them to Africa if he wanted!!
And second, is the saga about there being horseflesh in certain burgers. I mean, if you have meat, and that meat comes from a herbivore isn't it all the same? 
As far as I'm concerned, if you're going to eat a cute little chicken or pig, then why not a horse?
(And I do speak from someone who used to have a horse and love all animals as well!)

We didn't stop eating meat just because of the cruel way that some animals are treated in their short lives. If that were just the reason, we would also stop drinking milk and eating cheese. It was mainly because we were very, very  poor when we first got together. We didn't have the money to spend on big expensive chunks of meat, so we had to buy cheap mince, burgers, sausages etc.. And we didn't like the thought of not knowing what was in our food.  Especially when eating 'chicken' burgers, you would come across a big piece of grisle or a huge bone!) We also realised that with most of the meat we ate, we had numerous sauces and pickles with it to disguise the flavour of the meat and make it taste 'nice'. You know, more palatable.
Like with burgers when you add lots of tomato ketchup and gherkins. Roast beef when you add lots of horseradish and mustard. It all hides the flavour of the meat.  
Which I suppose comes down from our forebears when they 'invented' sausages with all the herbs and spices in to hide the flavour of rotting meat.

Now, I know that of the people who have started to read my blog, most of you are the frugal ones, who like us are trying hard to be savvy with your food and savings. And I'm by no means trying to 'convert' anyone to vegetarianism.  I just wanted to have a chat, and ask you to think, I mean really think about where you get your meat from, and whats important to you about your diet.
Do you like the sauces?  Or do you like the meat?
What do you think about eating horse meat?  Or any type of meat?

I'd be really interested to know :)

Have a great day tomorrow, and wrap up warm folks.

P.s. If you've got this far, thankyou most kindly for reading my ramble :D :D

4 comments:

  1. It's snowing here as well. Bundle up or better still hibernate and enjoy.........

    Gill

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  2. Hi, I just found your blog via Attic 24, and was interested as another adult vegetarian, with a similar childhood experience, no freezers, though, but local meat, from the butcher, and a lot of trout (caught by my father). Tins were tomatoes, occasionaly beans. We didn't kill the chickens or rabbits, though, my mother's one attempt to get us to eat one of our chickens resulted in sobbing and hunger-strikes, so they all lived out their natural lives. Now I think of eating bread and dripping with horror, but enjoyed it at the time, far more than the meat itself.
    I'll enjoy browsing the rest of your blog, here in snowy Poole.
    best wishes, M

    ReplyDelete
  3. I am a vegetarian as well. I was bought up on meat stews and puddings etc. and as a teenager lots of ready chicken/tukey products. I am 41 now and been a vegetarian since I moved out of home at 21 and started cooking my own food.

    I don't see any difference between eating beef than horse meat. My children eat meat sometimes and often eat goat, duck, goose, venison at their Nans.

    For me it's just a labelling problem, I would still buy it if it said horse meat.

    Poppycat x

    ReplyDelete

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