Quick Healthy Recipes For You

I have had  a message from my Chef  son in Thailand to tell me there was a Rooster in the garden – he had made the comment that he didn’t know they had chickens “its dinner”  was the response.

I made Western, shuddering noises from my home whilst I watched our chickens scratching in the garden.  They are pets too.

His response was fast coming.  You eat chicken though he said,  you are supporting the very industry that keeps chickens caged  in cramped conditions, with no quality of life to end up on a conveyor belt in terror, knowing their turn and their end is coming soon and not being able to do anything about it.    Wouldn’t you rather eat a fresh bird that has led a happy life,  free to roam and scratch at will and when it has to end that end comes quickly, at its own home and it will know nothing about it.

This is how  the conversation went :

Son:  thats where chickens come from you know

Me:   Yes, I know but,  ohhhhahahahhhh  nooooooo

Son:  not wrapped in  plastic out of the fridge :-0

me:   ours just smile and eat

Son :  Dont be so Western   –  they have a great life   not stuck in a battery coop being fed antibiotics until they get their heads cut off watching their mates on a conveyor belt

He’s right.

We do need to know where our food has come from, how it is farmed, how it reaches us, how fresh it is, what is in it, how far has it come, how is it kept fresh until we eat it, how many additives are in it , how many chemicals ?

This raises a zillion questions:

• What is food ?
• What is not  ?
• Is food cultural ?
• Why do some cultures find some dishes delicious and others scorn them ?
• Why are  some forms of life sacred to some cultures and edible to others ?
• How do we know our food source is produced humanely ?
• How do we know it is killed humanely ?
• If we want fresh do we need to look at producing more  of it ourselves ?

Does this mean we need to keep a few Goats and a Water Buffalo in the back garden in case we fancy a steak or two and want to be sure of the food source ?   Should we learn how to kill our own food ?  If we all had to kill our food, then a lot of us probably would  be vegetarians.

Perhaps the Buffalo example is a teensy bit extreme !

We can all watch what we buy, look for organic, farm produced produce,  grow more of our food,  even sprouts are a start and micro and salad greens can be grown in containers in even  the smallest apartment and provide a healthy boost to everyday food.

Chicken ?   I’m still thinking on that one ………..

Would he eat his cat ? I think not.