Exploring my Options

I've been a vegetarian for 15 years. There were a few things that sparked my vegetarianism as a 12 year old. First, I loved animals and always had. As a young child I had a 'bug cemetery" by an old stump that looked like a church where I buried the poor hapless dead bugs I found outside.

I used to spend hours watching animals outside. Once, after a lot of patience, I got a chipmunk to take food from my hand on the front step. I also always loved dogs, cats, horses, you name it. I was always observant and interested in animals body language and sounds. There was never any doubt in my mind that animals can think, feel, and enjoy their lives much like humans.

I still feel that the line we draw between humans and animals is exaggerated. Yes, we have opposable thumbs. We can make tools and tame our land. But don't chimps make tools, though simple? Don't dogs noises mean something to other dogs? And don't animals protect and love their families and friends (pack)?

One of my friends suddenly became a vegetarian around 5th or 6th grade. I thought, wow, what an idea. Growing up in Maine, I hadn't been exposed to vegetarianism as a food choice at that time. Around the same time, I wrote a paper for school on slaughterhouses. That sealed the deal, and since I was 12, I have been a vegetarian.

At that point, I was quite the anomaly in my small town in Maine. My family didn't know what to feed me, and felt frustrated by my refusal to eat meat. Restaurants often didn't have vegetarian options, and relatives weren't sure what I WOULD eat. People often joked by offering me meat at the dinner table:

"Hey Lindsey, want some chicken?"
"Hey Lindsey, are you SURE you don't want a hamburger? They are so juicy."

People still do this. Others, like my dad, view me as an 'extremist', a sort of outside of normal American culture freak. A Food fundamentalist. I of course, see his intake of meat (often 1-2 times a day) in the opposite light.

When I was 12, people regarded it as a 'phase', something I would get over and move on. Something new and trendy. Something I would get bored and tire of, eventually picking up that chicken wing or grabbing a slice of pork sirloin. But, here I am, age 27, still strong in my convictions.

Because for me, it was never a phase, but a moral conviction. I never wanted to be responsible for the suffering, pain, and death of other living creatures. At 27 though, I have a greater ability to educate myself about the world and the what's going on in it. For a long time, I felt sure in my convictions as a vegetarian who still eats eggs and milk, who still buys leather.

But, recently, I came across an "eat vegetarian" site which opened up Pandora's box for me. Maybe it never occurred to me, or maybe I just didn't want to know, but most eggs and milk in this country are also produced in large commercial facilities. For a long time, I have been buying 'cage free' eggs, thinking that is solving my dilemma. Chickens get to run free on a farm if they are 'cage free', right? Right?

It looks as though my assumptions are wrong. Cage free doesn't necessarily mean farm life, especially if its a big commercial brand. Instead, it looks as though it just means that 1,000s of chickens are crowded into a small, sunless shed. Still unable to go outside, they are sent to slaughter once they stop laying well. Bleck.

Then, we have milk. I have been somewhat lactose intolerant for years, and usually drink soy milk, but lately I found some probiotics that enable me to eat more milk products I enjoy, like cottage cheese, yogurt, and, my Achilles heel, ice cream. Let's be honest. I have no idea where that milk comes from. I never really thought of it. I always thought "Oh! Those silly vegans! Cows aren't killed for their milk, what's the problem?"

Well, it turns out these huge commercial dairy farms aren't so appealing either. From what I gathered, many keep these cows pumped up with hormones, separate their young soon after the birth, causing severely emotional reactions from both mother and calf, send the male calves to be raised for veal, shackled and unable to turn around, and due to lack of proper care, exercise, etc many of the dairy cows end up lame and sick, and are then sent off to slaughter. Double beck.

So, finally Lindsey needs to face the facts. Being a vegetarian is pretty good, but, umm, I have had my blinders on. My cage free eggs are not so farm life happy. My milk is feeding an industry of death, sickness, and torture.

So, now I am on a journey. I want to re-find that old fashioned, let's go milk the cows and send them out in the pasture to munch on grass while chickens are running around the barnyard, pecking up grains and vegetable scraps from the kitchen.

So I looked for a local organic farm that sells fresh farm eggs and milk. I found Brookford Farm not so farm from my house. Tomorrow I think I will give them a call and go get a tour of the farm, and see what they have for sale.

Now I just need to figure out what to do about leather.

Egg Dreams

So I have been a vegetarian since I was 12, when my good friend Anne (no longer a vegetarian, but still a follow of eating healthy and locally) introduced me to the concept. I had never liked meat (amongst a gazillion other things I wouldn't eat, I was the mom's nightmare style picky eater), and I had always loved animals. So one day she told me she became a vegetarian and it was like "whoa! you mean people do that? and I can too?" I was pretty excited. My mom was not so thrilled. "I'm not cooking separate meals for you!"

After all of these years I was pretty used to be being a vegetarian. But I still have lots of stomach issues. I won't bore you with the details. I went to a vareity of Doctors. Mr. By-the-Book doctor proclaimed (after doing fancy tests) that nothing was wrong with me, and it was all in my head. (Gee, thanks). Ms. Happie-Hippie Doctor perscribed me on a no sugar diet to get rid of candidas albicans (or something), also she found lots of food I have sensitivities too (which all have panned out).

Still I didn't exactly follow her advice and my stomach didn't get better. Then about three or four months ago, I began to embrace the truth. Everytime I ate dairy, I felt very ill afterwards, and no lactaid didn't help. It took some forcing (by myself) but I stopped eating dairy, and damn, do I feel better.

So now I am a non-diary imbibing vegetarian.

But back to the title. Egg Dreams.

So I have always had a slight grossed-out reaction to eggs, but always ate them anyways. A few months ago, I purchased what I thought were local cage-free vegetarian fed hen eggs. Then I was making some breakfast and I noticed some hunkachunka pinkie stuff in my egg. Ew. I threw out the pinkie thing, trying not to look. The I went about my business, cracking the two more eggs for the recipe. All of them seemed, well, odd. I looked on the egg carton again. FERTILIZED EGGS it said in large (how did I miss this?) letters acrosssed the top. My stomach dropped and churned about. My intellectual side was reduced to "EWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW". I mean, eggs are already goo squeezed from between a very unintelligent bird's legs. They are gross enough unfertilized. But, fertilized? And why, oh why, would you sell such a thing? Do people eat them, ON PURPOSE? Are they for hatching?

Since then, I have not stopped eating eggs, but every time I crack one, I feel a reluctance. And last night, was the culmination of this. Egg Dreams.

I have a dream that I was making some food and cracked an egg. A little fetus was in it, which had a spikey backbone, all curled up. I tried to throw it away without thinking and cracked another one. It had a bigger, more disgusting spiney-back boned fetus inside. In my dream, I ran into the bathroom to be sick.

In the real world, I woke up totally disgusted. eggs. shudder. fetus. shudder. fertilized. shudder.

Am I destined to be a vegan? Well I did just make brownies with EGGS in it, so I guess we will see.

Food Experimentation: Americo-Indo-Chinese

lately, I have been having these terrible craving for pineapple stir-fry. Last time I was at the store, I purchased some cans of pineapple chunks in "their own juice" (sounds kind of gross, na?) Every time I open my sparsely populated food cupboard, said cans of pineapple sit there, staring at me, reminding me of my craving. "But, I don't KNOW how to make any kind of pineapple related stir-fry!" I tell the pineapple. Today, I came home from a interview for my research, just thinking of pineapple. So I sized up my friend, and though "there must be a recipe SOMEWHERE in one of these millions of vegetarian cookbooks my mom buys for me at Knight's of Columbus Sales. Or. Maybe in the Hare Krishna cookbook J. bought for me on the side of the road (or was it the subway?) in Boston." So I begin to look. Now mind you, all these cookbooks are foreign to me, the only recipes I used are the ones my friend V. let me copy from his notebook that his mom gave him when he came from India to go to school in the U.S. Those always end up tasty, as long as I don't put in the amount of red chili is asked for. The Hare Krishna cookbook asks for too many ingredients I don't have (apple juice? orange juice, what are these juices... i just have their own juice. bas) After flipping through the other veg cookbooks, I begin to think.. "eh, who trusts these people anyways?"

That's where My Brilliant Plan is born. I close the cookbooks and put them away, back on their rightful, not to be opened shelf about the oven. I take out the rice cooker, throw in some rice, turmeric, cumin seeds, and peas, and leave it to cook. (No, I wasn't sure what would happen, but it seemed like the results would be tasty, regardless.) Next I began looking through my fridge. I found a green pepper (or capsicum, if you prefer), red onions, and a tomato on the verge of not being edible anymore. I cut all three up into large pieces, like you always get at the Chinese restaurants. I found some frozen green beans in the freezer, and some garlic that was sprouting (eh, that doesn't matter, right?) Lastly, I retrieved the can of pineapple chunks, in their own juice.

But, alas! "Where's your protein?" my mom's voice boomed into my head. crap. I don't keep tofu around (and I can never make it taste good anyways). Beans? Ew. Just doesn't go in stir-fry. Ah ha! I took out two eggs, scrambled them, and set them aside.

Whew! What a spread of delicious ingredients. But now I had to tackle the next issue. Sauce. How will I make a tasty sauce? My eyes flicked up to the cookbooks, but.. eh.. no. I make Indian food all the time. My spice dabba is just sitting there, filled with delicious indian spices. I decide to wing it.

I take out my pan, throw in a little oil, some cumin seeds, amchur (mango powder), a little more turmeric for color, a bit of red chili for zing, and a dash of the magic spice from when the cat knocked over the spice dabba and all the spices got mixed together inside.

As this started to heat up, I threw in the cut up veggies, frozen green beans, and garlic (I waited to put the garlic in because I didn't want it to brown). I dumped in the pineapple and its own juice. After stirring a bit, I poured in a cup of water and let it cook for a bit, adding the ripe tomatoes near the end so they wouldn't mush too much.

Using the sniff method, I determined a little more spice was needed. I went for amchur because I wanted a tangy-sweet but light sauce and added a bit more turmeric (hey, I hear it's good for your brain!) for color, a sprinkle of salt and a spoonful of sugar to keep it light but interesting. I let it simmer for awhile, and added in the scrambled egg. By the time a good amount of water had evaporated, (leaving behind a hopefully tasty sauce) the rice cooker had finished cooking my Lindsey-pulao.

I opened the lid and Wow! That rice sure was yellow! So maybe a little less turmeric would be needed next time.

I gave myself a helping of rice, and loaded it up with the stir-fry, making sure to spoon on some sauce. Snapped a photo, and took a bite..



Mmmm. Pretty good. And I got to enjoy a tasty Americo-(for me)-Indo-(for all my borrowing from my Indian cooking knowledge, some of the only cooking knowledge I have)-Chinese-(for my attempts at forging some chinese food).