The modern market place

I shopped at Walmart today. You can give me grief about this. Go ahead. I'd like to hear it. I have mixed feelings about shopping there and feel somewhat ignorant about the issues.

Yet.

Why do some people hate Walmart but shop at Target? Is there a difference? Target has hip ads. Walmart doesn't. Target has some hot designers working for them. Walmart might, but they aren't talking.

Supposedly Walmart treats it's employees badly. I've read that. I know there are lawsuits. But, the people I've known who work at Walmart say they like it. In fact, a number of people have told me they are treated far better at Walmart than the local Food Coop.

What about the people who make the goods for Walmart? Yes, they are certainly paid badly, but what would they be doing if they didn't have those jobs? If you can illuminate me, please do.

I am hurting for money. I'd love to shop locally, but when I have a choice of paying nearly thirty bucks for a roasting pan at the hardware store, over a hundred dollars at the housewares store (!), or nine dollars at Walmart, well, there's really no choice there. I promise, when I have more money, I will shop at Walmart less. Or even stop. Who knows?

I do buy many things locally, but I realize they're not local items: Japanese and Himalayan rice. Irish steel cut oats and Italian cheese. The only truly local things we buy are eggs, milk and vegetables during the season. I also buy local yarn and fleece. But that's about it.

Living here in the countryside, there is less opportunity for local shopping than when I lived in New York City. I miss going to the green grocer, the bakery, the butcher, the pharmacy and the little newspaper shops. But even in New York City, those places are going by the wayside. That's not only a loss of local shopping, but a loss of community.

Another word about pay: Walmart pays its employees poorly. So does every other retailer employer. But, so does the school system, and that's criminal. There's enough inequity to go around in so many spheres, I don't know where to begin. This is too large for me, so I'm being more terse than I usually am.

Some days I wish I had succeeded in living a subsistence lifestyle, but I did not. And on my present half acre of land, with a mortgage, that's not going to happen.

I will say this, however, I did not buy a turkey at Walmart. For some reason (and maybe it was all that talk about factory farming), the idea of doing so was abhorent to me.

Painting note: Vincenzo Campi
The Fruit Seller 1580
Ah, that looks simply wonderful.

Warning: long post with some gruesome bits (and a bonus curse word)

In my last post, which was a harmless piece of fluff about cooking dinner, a commentor wrote:
"Ahem, I had no idea lamb legs could so peacefully coexist with being a buddhist. . ."

Quite a spirited conversation about vegetarianism followed. I commend all involved for their seemingly good spirits and courtesy. As Obama has said, "We can disagree without being disagreeable."

Now, when I discuss "issues", I always try to use myself as an example. I may read, and read quite a bit, but I tend not to intellectualize. I speak from my experience in the world, and hope that by doing so, I present a jumping off point for others to respond as they wish. I try not to push any dogma at others. I have my opinions, and some of them are pretty extreme, but these are mostly about aesthetics, so I care not a whit if anyone agrees with me.

That being said, I realized that as far as eating goes, I've become almost totally mindless.

So, I'll tell my story, and you can take away from it what you will (not like I could stop you from doing otherwise):

Many long years ago, I bought chickens from a Buddhist farm outside of New York City. They raised their chickens well, but did not cut them up and put them into nice clean packages for sale. You got your chicken whole, wrapped in brown paper, and had to deal with the fact that in order to eat it, you needed to cut off it's head, feet and pull out all the internal organs. Thinking back, I'm surprised they didn't ask you to kill your own chickens. Thinking now, I'm surprised they were doing this at all, but it was a good way to get city people to think about the food they eat, so it does make sense.

I remember struggling with those chickens. In order to cut off the chickens' heads, I needed to place a cloth over them. I did it anyway and always felt badly about it. That was a big red flag that I didn't feel right about it.

And so, I stopped eating meat after a while, only for the fact that I felt if I couldn't kill the animal or even cut it's head off after it was killed for me, I had no business eating it.

At that time, I worked at a historical museum where I lead children's field trips. When we gathered around in the kitchen, I'd always ask the children what they thought people ate in the 1700's. They'd usually yell out "Chicken!" and perhaps a few would say "Hot Dogs! Hamburgers!" but that was essentially it. I asked them, "Do you think people went to the store and bought their chicken wrapped up in plastic?" Plastic was the give-away word, and kids are smart, so they'd all yell "No!" What did they eat? Squirrels. Rabbits. Pigeons were very popular, and still can be bought in stores in England. The kids would squirm and say "Ew!" when I gave them a list of cute little animals that people could eat (and still do).

I wasn't trying to turn them into vegetarians, but I was telling them the truth.

So, I couldn't face up to the idea of even cutting up my dead chickens, and then I read John Robbins' "Diet for a New America", which goes into enormous detail about the horrors of factory farming. No more meat for me. That was that.

Then two things happened. I moved to a rural Maine and started raising sheep. I also spent some time at a Buddhist monastery. Now, you'd think neither of these things would do anything to make me stop being a vegetarian, but they did.

I knew nothing about raising animals, and had a number of mentors. All of these people raised animals in the most humane ways possible. I was raising my sheep for their fleece, but others were raising their animals for meat. If they had sheep, fleece was secondary, except for the few people I knew who had very expensive pure breds, and those folks, most of them, were not trying to make a living. Nor were they trying to feed famillies. I knew people who made their own bacon and sausages, smoked turkey and all sorts of meat specialties. I never touched any of that stuff, even though it smelled great, and I insulted quite a few people by not at least sampling their delicacies.

One day I was hanging around at this fellow's house while he was cooking up some bacon. I've always loved bacon. I kept saying "that smells great", over and over again. Fakin' Bacon just never cut it, but I didn't really care. That day, I was salivating. This fellow was one of those Mainers who doesn't say much. He helped me out so much when I needed help with great straightforward advice, such as the day I found one of my ewes walking around with a couple of hoofs hanging out her back end. I called him up and said "What do I do?" He said, "Just reach in there and pull out that lamb!" That was the longest sentence I'd ever heard him utter. Anyway, he got quite tired of hearing me moan about how good that bacon smelled and stuck a plate under my note and said, "Eat the fucking bacon." When a person like that curses, you do what they say. So I ate it, and it was delicious.

Still, I was a vegan. I had a slip. That's all.

That winter, I stayed at a monastery and almost everyone was ill for months. I heard that they decided later that a little bit of meat in the diet was okay, though not mandatory for all, but it was decided that us Northerners needed it to stay healthy and active during the winter. I didn't think that made that much sense, but at this well-respected monastery, people also smoked cigarettes and drank quite a bit, both things that this new-to-Buddhism person just assumed were things good Buddhists did not do.

Combine that with missing bacon, sausage, cigarettes and booze and I was fired up and ready to return to my past hedonistic ways.

And so, here I am. I don't smoke cigarettes any more, barely drink, and I do eat meat, but not every day. I feel comfortable with what I think of, if I think of it at all, as "moderation". But the thing is, until today, I haven't been thinking about how I feel about eating meat for years.

The comments I read today, along with some Buddhist reading I did earlier, got me thinking. I have no idea what I feel about this subject. Do I even care? I'm going to be brutally honest. I don't even know the answer to that.

So, you've read this far (perhaps) and I have no conclusion for you. I'm glad that I posted yesterday's fluff, for it banged open a window that's been shut for years. Will I stop eating meat? Just thinking about not doing so makes me anxious. Since returned to being an omnivore, I've developed quite the taste for meat, and besides, Dick is an amazing barbecue guy. It would be quite a blow to him if I stopped eating his outrageously delicious locust cooked ribs.

This is the end of the post. A history. Some questions. For me. And if you want to lay it on me, have a spirited argument with me, bring it on! I'm not defending myself. I have no defense. And, I've gotten quite attached to eating meat. The idea of glazed duck makes my mouth water. I'm thinking, "Is this another red flag?"

Photo note: Glazed Duck with Clementine Sauce

Addendum: I re-read this hours later and found that in editing, I had garbled some sentences. What I accidentally wrote is quite funny: . . .I've developed quite the taste for the truth, and besides, Dick is an amazing barbecue guy.

Well, I can't deny that one, though facing the truth is quite another thing.

Curry du jour - a recipe from a lazy cook

I used to love to cook. When I was a freelance artist, I was very disciplined. I worked at home, but I kept to a schedule and didn't break it unless there was an emergency. I worked from 9am to noon, took an hour break, and worked until 5pm. If there's wasn't an art director screaming for an inhumane deadline, I'd stop dead, no matter where I was in the day's work.

Cooking has something to do with this, I promise.

At noon, I would have a quick bite to eat. Then, I'd do whatever preparations were in order for dinner. Back then, this could mean anything from making pasta from scratch to deboning a whole cornish game hen, stuffing it, and sewing it back together (a very impressive feat, believe me). Vegetables were chopped, vinaigrettes were left to develop their flavors, and little bowls of ingrediants were filled if I was going to cook Chinese food. I was quite orderly, and I knew that by the time dinner rolled around, I'd never have the energy for any of this.

This cooking mania was prompted by a show on PBS about the "Great Chefs of New Orleans." I bought the accompanying book and both volumes of Julia Child's "Mastering the Art of French Cooking."

One memorable meal was that crazy deboned game hen, with a tri-color vegetable pate starter, and petit peas wrapped in steamed lettuce leaves. Another one was a white bean pate with whole vegetables. It looked beautiful. Each slice had circles of orange carrots, purple beets, green peas and red peppers. It tasted like school paste and was dumped in the garbage. We had a pizza that night.

For years now, I haven't enjoyed cooking all that much. I'm certainly not the uber-disciplined person I used to be. I tend to cook the same things over and over again. It's usually tofu and broccoli or string beans in black bean sauce, pasta with chicken or turkey sausage in marinara sauce, white pizza with red peppers and mushrooms, or a spinach and cheese omelette. I eat lots of Boca Burgers and ramen.

I was planning on making a curry last night but was feeling lazy (and had yet another night of ramen, tofu and egg). Dick couldn't find a can of tomatoes at the store, so he bought a pound of tomatoes, and knowing I would have to cook something from scratch was too much to deal with. Seriously, this is how I've come to think of cooking - too much to deal with. If I lived in a city, I'd be looking at takeaway menus every night, but where I live there's only one choice in that arena - a pretty lousy pizza from the General Store.

So, today was curry day. It was now or never, for we had a big leftover leg of lamb and I didn't want it to go to waste (sorry to all you vegetarians for subjecting you to images of deboned capons and legs of lamb).

I wound up making a mean curry. It's simmering now. Here's the recipe:

1 lb of tomatoes, de-seeded
2 tablespoons of good curry powder
3-5 cloves of garlic, your choice
1 cup of chicken or vegetable broth or bouillion
1 onion
Meat optional
Cauliflower
Green peas
Chickpeas would probably be good in this, but I don't have any

Put the tomatoes, curry powder, garlic and liquid into a blender and blend until almost totally liquid. This stuff tastes great cold, like gazpacho, but spicier.

Cook the onions lightly in olive or canola oil. Then pour the curry liquid in the pan.

If you're using meat, throw it in about 1 to 1 1/2 hours before you want to eat. Cook the cauliflower for about a half an hour. Throw the peas in for five minutes at the end.

Serve with basmati rice. If you've got some Indian bread, great. This is really tasty, so having something to sop it up with is good.

Not a big deal of a recipe, but it's easy. I didn't bother to tell you how to cut up the cauliflower or how much to put in. That kind of detail is just silly. Cut it up however you want. You want lots of peas? Throw 'em in.

Tip for de-seeding tomatoes: Just cup them in half and scoop the seeds out with your thumbs. De-seeding always sounds like it's going to be a chore, but it isn't.

I'm annoyed because I'm out of basmati rice. I wonder what my Japanese brown rice is going to taste like with butter in it. Sticky and buttery, I'd guess.

Now it's time for me to cook the cauliflower. See ya. Don't expect another recipe too soon.

Photo note: Looking at this makes me think it's summer.

Addendum: I put too much lamb in it. Would you read a cookbook like this? Actually, I think it's not a bad idea. If recipes were less rigid, people would be creative. And, I'd like to see some famous chef write "I put too much lamb in it" instead of telling me that I need to put 1/8th of a teaspoon of cumin in something. Cooking is not that exacting! And failures are inevitable.

Also, Japanese brown rice cooked with butter is quite delicious. It wound up being my favorite part of the meal.

Surprise of the day

I'm making a red sauce, was short on cash, and so I bought a bottle of wine for $3.99. Figured it didn't matter if it was disastrously bad wine or not, 'cause I'd only use it for cooking.

Honestly, I don't like red wine all that much. This sounds snooty, but the reason is that I don't like cheap red wine, so if I do drink it, I mix it with sparkling water.

If I want some booze, I go for the micro-brews. I like good beer and good beer is affordable.

So, I'm making a sauce and the bottle's been sitting on the counter for a while, breathing. I wondered how awful it was and took a swig. Didn't bother with a glass. It's cheap wine, nearly as cheap as Nightbird (if they still make that) and anyone who drinks that does it right from the bottle.

The stuff is good. Imagine my shock. It lacks that fizzy and overly sharp tang of a typical low end red wine. I figured I must be delusional, so I googled it. Surprise number two is this: "Tisdale Merlot. . .kind of like finding a hidden treasure or $40 in a coat pocket from last winter."

Image note: What, you expect a better photo for a $3.99 bottle of wine?