Alice,
We've been writing recently about our memories of being on farms and eating
stuf from them. I talked about getting milk from the cows on the adjacent
farm, skimming off cream, my mother and aunt churning butter, picking
berries in the surrounding woods and fields, the free range chickens that my
grandmother owned, etc. If I could manage it, I'd buy my whole milk from
Whole Food but they now sell it only in glass bottles and given my arthritis
and other physical problems, I don't want to risk dropping a heavy glass
bottle filled with milk. For some reason, they stopped selling it in
cardboard containers. But my organic eggs come from there and they taste
different from white supermarket eggs. I get prime meat from a butcher who
sells prime meat, but I don't know where it comes from. Also, there are, if
you can believe it, different qualities of prime meat. The really good
places that had the best prime meat have closed. I haven't attempted getting
grass fed beef or lamb from Whole Foods, if they even have it, and I don't
know if it's tender. I get good organic chicken, but it isn't free range. I
probably couldn't afford that if I could get it.
Miriam
________________________________
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Alice Dampman
Humel
Sent: Sunday, January 03, 2016 2:59 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: More On the Pig
no amount of compensation can change the fact that the meat is dry and
tasteless, that boneless, skinless chicken breasts are virtually
indistinguishable from the styrofoam they're packed on
And a diet with insufficient fat from various healthy sources is unhealthy.
You need fat for skin, hair, and to keep from being a dried up old prune,
inside and out.
I now buy many things at the Middle Eastern markets. They don't even carry
anything but whole milk.no skim, no 1%, no 2%, no non-fat. The halal meats
have flavor and texture and fat. When I roast a chicken and make stock from
the bones, both the chicken and the stock have flavor, a wonderful texture,
and, yes, fat. The supermarket chickens are bland, they have a horrible,
soft, mushy, uniform texture, and what little fat there is often tastes just
the slightest bit old, if not downright a little rancid. Same goes for the
beast (of which I eat very little) and the lamb.
When I spent a year in an artists' colony in a small farming village in
Germany, I used to get milk right from the farm next door. I'd carry my
little can over there, pay the farmer, let the milk sit and skim off about 3
inches of cream from the top, or mix it up into the milk depending on what I
was cooking.
Eggs from the hens in the yard taste like eggs, not like nothing. Same goes
for carrots, apples, all sorts of fruits and vegetables that have bright,
intense, even intense in their delicacy if the natural flavor was more on
the delicate side.
Big agribusiness has destroyed our health and our tastebuds by filling us
with nutritionally bankrupt, tasteless, textureless products or products
from which the natural flavors and nutrition and textures have been removed
and replaced with artificial versions of nutrients (enriched, they call it)
flavor enhancers, artificial flavors and colors and so on.
On Jan 3, 2016, at 2:16 PM, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Have you noticed that pork chops have changed, as have pork roasts?
They
used to be deliscious and part of the reason for that was the fat
running
through the meat. But then the health police said that fat is bad
and the
industry began breeding pigs so that there would be less fat in the
meat.
That means, dryer meat with no wonderful rims of fat around the pork
chops.
And that is one reason that I don't eat pork chops anymore. That's
not the
only reason. I've read about the conditions under which the pigs are
raised.
Now if I had access to, and could afford, pork from pigs grown on an
old
fashioned farm, bred in the old fashioned way, maybe I'd consider
eating a
pork chop. Yes yes, I know about recipes that are supposed to
compensate for
the dryness of the meat, but it just isn't the same.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Carl
Jarvis
Sent: Sunday, January 03, 2016 11:39 AM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] More On the Pig
Just kidding, Miriam. I've never taken the life of any critter,
much less a
pig. Even when my grandma grabbed a fat hen and hauled it off to
the
chopping block, I could never watch the actual chop...well, once I
did, but
never again. I did watch my mother hold a rabbit up by its hind
legs and
whack it behind the ears with a short, heavy stick. But despite my
inability to do the deed, I never suffered from an inability to chow
down on
freshly fried chicken or rabbit.
So the smart pig roaming around Roger's neighborhood is safe from
me.
Just as the cute pot belly pig dancing around our cabin was safe.
In fact,
if we'd not found the owner, we had talked about hauling that funny
little
guy over to our eldest daughter's home. She loves pigs and at the
time they
had a five acre farm near Yakima. Of course I do love bacon and
pork chops.
I wonder if anyone has done a study on subjects like that? People
who can't
kill another living creature, but can smack their lips over the hot,
tasty
remains?
At one time, when my eldest daughter was around 4 years old, we were
given a
Ginnie Pig, a rather mean fellow who liked to bite finger tips. We
tried
giving him away but found no takers. Finally I said, "I'm going to
release
him to freedom". So up the alley I went. I found a very thick
stretch of
weeds and opened Petey's cage. Off he went. As I turned to go back
home
our cat passed me, headed for the thick grass, hot on the trail of
Petey.
Nothing to do but to go back and try to out hunt the cat. Even
blind, I
beat the cat. So we went back to looking for some unsuspecting
person. A
woman and her 8 year old son finally rose to the challenge and took
pig,
cage and all. As they were loading the cage into their car, the
darn little
critter bit the boy on the finger. "Are you sure he's friendly?"
the mom
asked.
I assured her that he was probably just nervous, since he was not
accustomed
to cars.
We never heard another word from them.
Carl Jarvis
On 1/2/16, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
That's terrible! Pigs are very intelligent animals. This one
seems to
have figured out how to become the center of attention in
his
community. I think he should be honored for his public
relations
abilities.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of
Carl Jarvis
Sent: Saturday, January 02, 2016 1:20 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: More On the Pig
This is the trouble with giving pigs a bit of the limelight.
Just
mention them and they try to Hog all the news.
My cold hearted solution would be to gather your neighbors,
catch the
pig, build a big bond fire and have a real pig roast.
Carl Jarvis
On 12/31/15, Roger Loran Bailey
<dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
The local television news just reported that about
five to six miles
away from where I live someone found a pig getting
into their garbage.
Then later in the day several other people reported
seeing a pig
running around their neighborhoods. A news crew
finally got a picture
of it and asked anyone who knows who might have lost
a pig to call
them. I called my neighbor who also saw the news
report and they
confirmed that it is definitely the same pig that
stopped by to play
with the dogs. It is solid black. No one knows where
it came from.
