You can't run away on harvest day...

A fairly short post today, as I am getting ready to fly out to Seattle for a weekend with my Exuberant Animal friends & colleagues

Supermarkets.  They're a problem.  Don't get me wrong - in many ways they are an incredible achievement of technology and logistics.  But they have so completely isolated us from the sources of our food that we no longer have any perspective on where it all comes from.

Today we're going to visit the meat aisle.  Next time you're at the supermarket take stroll down the meat section and look at what's being sold.  All the meat is pre-cut and nicely wrapped in bloodless little bundles.  You don't see many bones, do you?  Nothing in there even closely resembles the original animal, does it?

And yet it was all an animal once.  If we are going to eat meat (which I do, with gusto) then we owe it to ourselves and the animals we consume to go into the process with our eyes open.

Animals have bones.  They have organs (most of which are edible!)  They bleed.  And, like it or not, they need to be killed and gutted before they are eaten.  It's a natural thing and shouldn't shock or horrify us.  Russ here will take you through it:

(WARNING - you are about to see a chicken die.  Skip the video if you want to, but if you eat meat I think you owe it to your food to understand the process. It's really not that bad.)

For those of us without the means or the desire to kill our own poultry, I strongly suggest you start buying whole chickens at market.  Pound for pound,  buying a whole chicken is far cheaper than buying a pre-cut piece of meat.  Roasting a chicken is extremely easy, will make your house smell amazing, and will impress friends and family.  Moreover, there is something very primal and satisfying in handling the bones, skin and organs.  It is high time we reestablished this connection with our dinners.

Note:  the title for this post comes from a chapter of the fantastic book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver.

Comments

[Josh]

Great post!