{"id":1133,"date":"2011-08-31T01:38:14","date_gmt":"2011-08-30T17:38:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.marga.org\/foodblog\/?p=1133"},"modified":"2011-08-31T01:38:14","modified_gmt":"2011-08-30T17:38:14","slug":"on-kids-and-meat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.marga.org\/foodblog\/2011\/08\/on-kids-and-meat\/","title":{"rendered":"On Kids and Meat."},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201dWhat\u2019s for dinner,\u201d asks my 6-year old daughter Camila. \u201cPork chops<\/a>\u201d I answer. \u201cWhat animal do they came from?\u201d. Surely she knows, I\u2019m not the greatest fan of pork but Camila and I both love pork ribs and bacon. \u201cPig,\u201d I say. The tears start to come out. \u201cWe can\u2019t have pig, they are nice animals\u201d. \u201cBut they are ugly,\u201d I respond, my oldest daughter, Michaela, has already forbidden us from eating any \u201ccute\u201d animals: lamb, duck, venison have all disappeared from our menus. \u201cPigs are cute!\u201d she screams. \u201cThis was a very ugly pig,” I promise, somewhat amused, I’ve gone through this before. \u201cNo, all pigs are cute!,\u201d she yells, tears coming into her eyes. She calms down a bit, though, there may be a compromise. \u00a0 \u201cHow did the pig die?”\u00a0 I could lie, I could tell her it was very old or ill and we are honoring him by eating him. But that\u2019s bullshit. I try not to lie to my children (though the Tooth Fairy did visit Camila’s pillow last night) and I don\u2019t want them to think that it\u2019s safe to eat animals that have not been killed for that purpose. So I tell her the truth. She bursts into tears. \u201cYou can\u2019t kill animals! It\u2019s wrong, it\u2019s just wrong to kill animals! They are like us!\u201d. I\u2019m not surprised by the outburst. I\u2019ve gone through the same thing before, with Mika. She\u2019s nine, now, and pretty much an omnivore (save for the \u201ccute animal\u201d thing), but she\u2019s tried to be a vegetarian before. I accommodated. It didn\u2019t last.<\/p>\n

I think that children are natural vegetarians. Kids love animals, even ugly animals (Mika just checked out a coffee table book from the library on chickens<\/em>). They don\u2019t want to eat them. I\u2019m pretty sure that if I took meat away from their menu, they wouldn\u2019t notice and even Mika wouldn\u2019t ask for it. The problem, however, is that they won\u2019t eat vegetables. They\u2019ll have broccoli, and carrots and peas – they just love snap peas. But they\u2019ve said goodbye to green beans, and they pretty much never touch other veggies. I could force the issue, I\u2019m sure, but I don\u2019t like veggies myself and my parents insistence that I eat them turn me off on them for decades. I could, theoretically, raise them on pasta, beans and cheese dishes, those \u201ckid friendly foods\u201d other parents resort to (and please, don\u2019t think I\u2019m judging). But I won\u2019t. When I was growing up my mother resembled a short order cook, most days making at least one custom dish for one of her kids. Sometimes we\u2019d all eat something different. I swore I\u2019d never do that. One dinner for all, if someone doesn\u2019t like it, they\u2019re on their own. It\u2019s worked well so far.<\/p>\n

I understand my children\u2019s feelings about not killing animals. If I liked vegetables, I\u2019d probably be a vegetarian myself. There is something very distasteful, even to my mind, about raising other creatures for food. And don\u2019t get me started on factory farming! And the how harmful cows are to the environment!\u00a0 If you think about it at all, really, eating meat (or at least beef) is wrong<\/em>.\u00a0 But I don\u2019t like veggies enough to subsist on them and I don\u2019t want a carbohydrates-only diet. So I compromise, no lamb (giving up venison, duck, rabbit or other such animals is less of an issue). They are cute. It would hurt Mika\u2019s feelings. But I won\u2019t give up beef, pork or chicken. I tell myself they are stupid animals (though I\u2019m not that sure about pigs), I try not to think about it.<\/p>\n

So tonight we are having beef. It\u2019s ginger beef<\/a>, a Canadian recipe. I\u2019ll make it non-spicy so the kids can eat it. If they don\u2019t want it, there will be rice and salad. Or they can forage in the fridge, I saw celery, cucumber and baby carrots there, frozen bean & cheese burritos in the freezer. They\u2019ll make do.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201dWhat\u2019s for dinner,\u201d asks my 6-year old daughter Camila. \u201cPork chops\u201d I answer. \u201cWhat animal do they came from?\u201d. Surely she knows, I\u2019m not the greatest fan of pork but Camila and I both love pork ribs and bacon. \u201cPig,\u201d I say. The tears start to come out. \u201cWe can\u2019t have pig, they are nice […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[172,171],"class_list":["post-1133","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-text","tag-kids","tag-vegetables","post-preview"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marga.org\/foodblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1133","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marga.org\/foodblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marga.org\/foodblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marga.org\/foodblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marga.org\/foodblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1133"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.marga.org\/foodblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1133\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marga.org\/foodblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1133"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marga.org\/foodblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1133"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marga.org\/foodblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1133"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}