Graham Greene is one of those super famous author which for what ever reason I had always avoided. I just read "travels with my aunt" and enjoyed it. but then I went
and looked at the front of the book to read the small introduction explaining very briefly who Graham Greene was and I was actually sold. I want to try to find some other books he wrote. I'm thinking of "Journeys without maps" next. Of course "the heart of the matter" seems like a must. It is one of those books whose title it ems I have heard of too many times to remember when or here I first herd of it, but I would like to read it.In a totally different style, I keep on hearing / reading about Michael Pollan who wrote "in defense of food" and "the omnivore's dilemma". Both sound very interesting though I suspect that just as I finally adapting to eating meat this will probably
throw me back into being a veg....which is fair enough.Here is a small exert from an article he wrote for The New York Time Magazine:
"Piglets in confinement operations are weaned from their mothers ten days after birth (compare to 13 weeks in nature) because they gain weight faster on their hormones - and antibiotic - fortified feed. The premature weaning leaves te pigs with a lifelong craving to suck and chew, a desire they gratify in confinement by biting the tail of the animal in front of them. A normal pig would fight off his molester, but a demoralized pig has stopped caring. "Learned helplessness" is the psychological term, and it is not uncommon in confinement operations, where tens of thousands of hogs spend their lives ignorant of sunshine or earth or straw, crowded together beneath a metal roof upon metal slats suspended over a manure pit. So it is not surprising that an animal as sensitive and intelligent as a pig would get depressed, and a depressed pig will allow its tail to be chewed on to the point of infection. The U.S. D.A.'s recommended solution to the problem is called "tail docking". Using a pair of pliers (and no anesthetic), most, but not all, of the tail is snipped off. Why the little stump? Because the all point of the exercise is not to remove the object of the tail biting so much as to render it more sensitive. Now, a bite on the tail is so painful that even the most demoralized pig will mount to struggle to avoid it"
Hard to eat bacon after this....for me anyway.
Already for me the only way I can eat meat is if I make sure not to think of where it comes form, this is why I can't eat whole fish, I always joke that I can't eat food that looks at me but really I can't eat meat if I remember what it is...but maybe it is wrong maybe I need to think of where it comes from.
I'm just happy that I am not at work right now and I don't have to eat meat. In fact I have a delicious smelling pot of "dirty rice" on the stove with fenugreg, thym and cumin....mmmmmmm!
