Studio8 - Uniting the Arts

(from a scientific point of view)
A good thing to know about an animal, tastewise, is that it's system can potentially produce stuff which can alter the taste, in a bad way.
For example, an animal which is subject to a stressful life (like the no-life battery animals have) will produce toxins. Or rather, muscles produce toxins, it's part of their natural functionning, but stressed animals won't get rid of them. Those toxins will stay in the meat, and when cooked will give a cooked toxin undertone which will dim the taste.
An animal which spends a life of roaming freely, getting loads of sunlight, and "getting plenty of exercise" will get rid of those unwanted molecules.

Also, killing it plays a big role. The best way to do it, scientafically speaking, is Indian style.
At the moment an animal will feel it's going to be killed, it's glands will release adrenaline and all kinds of unwanted stress hormones, which will put the body in an unnatural state. One split second before the blow comes down is too late: the hormones will have circulated in the blood already, and every muscle will contain traces of them which will alter their taste, even after cooking. For an optimal taste, it's best that the animal never sees the blow coming. It's also best to kill the animal by chopping off the head, because when death occurs the brain releases massive amounts of endorphins. By sectionning the head from the body, you'll prevent them from reaching the arteries, thus from reaching the heart, and thus from reaching the muscles.

See it for yourself. Nothing to do with a supermarket steak, trust me.

one of my grandmothers used to estrangular the chickens (tirar el cogote), the other used a little axe to cut off the head. It´s curious but the women of the house did these tasks.
I have a vegetarian period of some months a long time ago, but living in a high carnívoro country made me change my mind easily.
Last weekend I recived some photos from my seattle cousin that made me feel a bit guilty: "Peace to all beings" beautiful little lamb, chicken and pig looking at me. Maybe I have to improve my empathy with the animal world someday.

"Peace for all beings"?
hah!
think of all the baby trees and plants you could save by eating them!
do you have any idea of how many plants are slaughtered just to keep a wild chicken alive? Of how many baby tree seeds are ruthlessly crushed under rodent teeth?

face it
they're killing machines
they deserve death
and what better way for them to die than a taste of their own medicine, yes?
what goes around comes around, yes?
do not to others what you don't want others to do to you, yes?
we're only restoring the balance between the eating n eaters
the raaht haind of Gaaaaad

seriously
I think you're under-estimating cute fluffy animals by pitying their death
ever saw the puss-in-boots's "please don't kill me" stance?
I mean, it's going to happen to them one way or another, just like all of us
you can also wait until they're all old and ugly and skinny, but the meat'll taste icky by then, and won't be very nourishing.

she would always carry her live chickens to jewtown, where the kosher butcher would slit their throats drain the blood. she would carry them home and pluck them, as she disenbowed them she would take the intestines a wrap them around the neck of her maltese cat.

chicken, god what is in the chicken. so broke I bought a ten pound bag chicken quaters. semifrozen, blood sloshing around. I think I ate about six pounds of them, protein. tuna when my budget can afford it. oh well thanks for the tip, beef when I buy it goes into soups boil the hell out of it for twelve hours. Just call me sponge brain square pants. Kind of a trippy feeling, friday was pay day and it is summer and the living is easy. California grapes finally, Mexican and Peru, but not as sweet as Califronia grapes. So the melancholia of my colia passes

You guys are soooooo fuuuuunnnnyyyy!!!!!!

But this topic is not!

We are savages, tearing the flesh from the bones of other creatures, wiping the grease from our chins, chatting happily in front of the telly as we watch some nature program and ooh and ah at the magnificence of creation while we're eating some of it.

But I do love meat!

But I don't eat baby anything. Veal shall never pass my lips. I used to think that it was an animal something akin to a sheep! Geez was I stupid....well, still am actually, but I digress..... When I found out veal was milk fed calves, that was the end of that treat....and oh I loved it!!!!!! Sacrifices must be made.

Pretty nonsensical thinking tho....I guess I figure all things deserve the opportunity to at least grow to adulthood before I eat it! Talk about nuts, the mind is a funny thing!

Veal is tricky....

I'm a pretty strict vegetarian...vegan is the baseline, fruitarian is the goal (I went strictly raw fruits for three months once...it was sadly cost-prohibitive, but that's a bit of my neurosis for a different tract). As a PETA-lovin' vegetarian, I know I'm betraying 'the cause' to say this, but:

if a person is gonna eat a cow, ethics may support veal more than a good ol' cut of mature bovine tragedy (oh! I almost made it without my crazy liberal agenda propaganda rhetoric).

I don't think meat-eaters want to hurt animals. I think most people who eat meat want the animal to have a good life before it's slaughtered. But in the end, slaughter sucks. There's no gilded way around it. And for most critters, life 'on the farm' (confined to the critter factory--which I was brought up seeing before moving to the city for my veggie brainwashing) ain't so sweet.

Veal-calves' emaciated caged-and-castrated life isn't really all too different from that of their moms and dads. The difference is it's at least a mercifully shorter life. So that's my possible ethical argument for eating veal.

Of course, ethics are messy. Eating veal supports the practice; should mercifully short lives for some poor future-cutlet justify the on-going practice? That doesn't make sense. In that direction, does killing something early because it's treatment is so pitiful justify the poor treatment to begin with? Ah, ethics.

And what about me? Sure, I eat a diet that it 'environmentally-friendly' and avoids 'as much killing as possible'...but I know that

a) my eating habits are a luxury of my WASP birth and context.

b) my WASP luxury diet that avoids killing things is built on unfair globalized farming practices that probably don't help the lives of the farmers producing my apples and avocados.

Summertime and the living ain't never nothing easy.

i'm vegetarian by delicious choice. Now, though, i eat fish occasionally since in my last blood tests i discovered my level of protein was too low.

How to get sufficient protein? it's no problem if i remember, but often i don't remember to eat enough. In that case, i need to decide on some fast fixes for better long term health.

i eat eggs occasionally as well, but eggs/fish, it doesn't matter. Both of these foods are living creatures and i have to admit that i thank them before i consume them. (not aloud - i don't want to freak out my family or others around me).

in fact, i've never admitted this to anyone. Strictly between us...

(judih)

(Maybe I understand. I haven't been able to find a viable replacement for leather profesional shoes. I humbly thank the cows. And I have been too self-conscious to admit it to folks.)

the cycle of life
we're all in this together

(!)

life in the kibbutz
is beautiful

life in the US going broke
but consumer confidence numbers look good
sometimes it gets ugly
desperate circumstances
out of coffee
but then it is payday
I may be my own boss
but I am a wage slave
Before bork got borked
he said anyone not a socialist at twenty doesn't have a heart, anyone who is a socialist at forty does't have a brain. I think he was a dork. I he nevered talke about how one should be at sixty, I would say that by the age of sixty a man should have a brain and a heart.
Life in auditory hell, a lot of noise can focus one's mind but not constant.. Lucky break to be able to work wherever I want. Been here a year and a half, going crazy in three quater time. Going to move to the third coast. I must be close to the sea, about the only holy ground I can think of. Must have less noise, listen to the "whispering murmuring sea" So many plans for the future, but not like this.
I am happy for you to have found such a beautiful place to live.

I got figs, huge bag of figs, the house in charm city had an outhouse, when we finaly got indoor plumbing, my grandmother planted a fig tree over the spot where the outhouse was. Neighbor gave a huge bag of figs

Having second thoughts about this post. If I was a buddha I could probably tune out all the noise, Getting ready four morning walk third day now, pretty quiet time of the morning, but strange land scape by the light of so many street lamps.