Temporary Pescetary

Anyone familiar with the McCartney song, "Temporary Secretary?"

No?

Ok, moving on.

Last week I read a pretty disgusting article by Johnathan Safran Foer on cnn.com about the horror show that is factory farming. You too can read it here, if you dare. I shared the article with my lovely husband and it also sufficiently freaked him out, a grown man who can eat a one pound burger in a single sitting.

We have been throwing around vegetarianism - more specifically pescetarianism - for a while. We're not giving up fish and seafood. We talked it over and decided that starting November 1st we would take a temporary meat break. Err... break from meat. Our trial period is set to expire on November 26th which just so coincidentally happens to be Thanksgiving. Funny how that works! We're not ready to give it up permanently, just long enough to forget the majority of that God forsaken article. Honestly, the article was just the tipping point. There are other factors that went into our decision.

1. I feel bad eating pigs. They're so smart. H1N1 is pig retaliation against all the years of hell we've bestowed upon them.

2. My cholesterol is rounding the peek into the danger zone. That as well as high blood pressure run in my family. Fried chicken, bacon and burgers are probably killing me (us). Time to cut the cord.

3. I cooked some drumsticks last week and attempted to de-skin them before cooking. Have you ever peeled the skin off of raw chicken? I don't recommend it. One of the legs had some of the yellow foot skin at the bottom and looking at it made me gag. Repeatedly. I ended up throwing it away.

4. Umm, where was I. I'm all grossed out now. Oh yes, green reasons. I think it's completely insane that I live in Nebraska, literally minutes away from a cattle farm, and yet who knows where my beef is coming from. I've never stopped to ask. And that right there is a problem. Same goes for chickens, eggs and the majority of my produce.

5. I'm tired of everything in my cooking repertoire. I'm ready to learn some new recipes. 80% of my cooking choices revolve around which piece of meat out of the freezer will thaw the fastest.

We'll see how this little experiment goes. I haven't eaten meat since Friday, and in four days I haven't wanted to eat it. I also haven't gone to a restaurant, smelled bacon or thought about Swedish meatballs in those four days. So, take that for what it's worth.

The intended outcome isn't to become vegetarians, it's to become more aware of the food we put into our bodies and where it comes from. I'm still not against returning to omnivorism, but only if it means being able to buy/eat meet from local family farms that are ethically managed. We're also making an effort to only buy wild caught and sustainable fish and seafood, as well as free range eggs. It's more expensive than running to the grocery store and grabbing what's on sale but we want to be able to rely less on meat as the main ingredient in our meals (see item #5 above).