Close to Nowhere
We always have interesting conversations about food, not only at work, but at home. Especially at home.
Our most recent conversations at home concern eating our chickens. Food is the reason daughter Dana is raising them. I’m having a bit of trouble eating one of “our own” chickens.
So, when I saw this column, I thought, how appropriate. Ready-made column on current topic!
Thursday, March 22, 2007
“Bumpy, what’s an Ephesian? Can I be one?”
We have very interesting conversations on our way to school most days.
Gremlin, who is not the happiest child in the mornings, is often the one who asks the hardest questions — I won’t go into the day when Binky wanted me to explain to her why Jesus wouldn’t bring her dog Matilda back from the dead, since He could.
It took several minutes of discussion Tuesday to realize that Grem didn’t want to live in Ephesus — what she was really curious about were “vegans.”
According to Wikipedia (on the Internet) “veganism (also known as strict vegetarianism or pure vegetarianism), as defined by the Vegan Society, is “a philosophy and way of living which seeks to exclude — as far as is possible and practical — all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals for food, clothing or any other purpose.” [1] A vegan does not consume or use animal products, notably meat, fish, poultry, eggs and dairy products.”
Try explaining all that to an 8-year-old! When told that to be a vegan, she’d have to give up cheese, bacon, hot dogs, chicken, roast, barbecue and most especially milk, well, guess who decided that she could remain carnivorous.
I wasn’t even about to try and tell her that a true carnivore didn’t eat veggies. We can’t even consider giving up corn, broccoli, mashed potatoes, french fries, carrots, etc., etc., etc.
Naturally, while discussing carnivores and vegans, we had to discuss another group of alleged “eaters.”
“Bumpy, are vampires vegans?”
Binky and I managed to convince her that vampires are probably pure carnivores. We’re pretty sure they don’t eat veggies at all.
Actually, Pop and I have been very lucky with both our kids and our grandchildren. Aside from our son, who won’t even think about eating a peanut or any other sort of nut, our kids ate fairly well growing up and our grandchildren aren’t real picky either.
Both girls used to love visiting their “Mammaw” in Bruce.
Before she passed away several years ago, Mammaw’s cornbread was worth fighting over; along with her butter beans (don’t call them limas around the girls), macaroni and cheese and peach cobbler.
In fact, we all discovered quite a few “new” goodies at Mammaw’s — potato soup over crumbled cornbread immediately comes to mind, along with rutabaga.
Mammaw, as with many older “country cooks,” almost qualified as a vegetarian — however, her wonderful roast beef and Brunswick stew knocked her out of that!
I don’t think she was an Ephesian either.