July was not a great month for blogging, but it was a great month for thinking about food. On July 3rd, an open copy of a magazine on the coffee table happened to catch my eye. It was PETA's monthly newsletter, which happened to feature a little blurb about Alicia Silverstone's book The Kind Diet. After reading on the Kind Life website that the book is about "living your healthiest and happiest life to the fullest, while taking care of mama Earth at the same time", I decided I needed to read Silverstone's book about making the transition to veganism. After all, the whole point of this little blogging project of mine is to explore the things that make life happy and good. Health plays a big part in that and I have no beef (sorry, I am lame and couldn't resist) with mama Earth. In fact, I kinda like her! That is probably why I came home from the bookstore with not only The Kind Diet, but also a copy of Jeffrey Masson's The Face on Your Plate.

That's right, while millions of my fellow Americans were out in the backyard grilling and enjoying burgers, ribs and hot dogs, I was the lone weirdo inside the house reading about vegetarianism, veganism and factory farms. And, wouldn't you know it, while I was taking a reading break, the awesome in so many ways Jane Velez Mitchell came on with an hour long Issues devoted to animal welfare and featuring disturbing footage of what goes on in factory farms. There was onee particularly disturbing set of images featuring a miserable excuse of a human being punching cows and poking them in their swollen udders with a pitchfork. Can you imagine how much that must hurt? I don't want my milkshake with a side of senseless abuse, thank you very much. Combined with what I'd been reading, these images disturbed me so much that I quit eating animal products of any sort for about three weeks.

It really made me think. What makes that cow any different from the dogs who share my home? Anyone who knows me will tell you that I spoil them beyond belief. They sleep in my bed. I know their personalities, their quirks, the things they like, the things that piss them off. They are not just pets, but family members. I would never even consider giving them away, let alone eating one of them. And, yet, there are places in the world where people would eat them. And what's the difference? I live in a culture where it's okay to eat a hamburger, but not a dog sandwich.

Like most people in this country, I have been a meat eater most of my life. I have enjoyed countless burgers, Thanksgiving turkeys, and German sausages. I have also loved animals for as long as I can remember, which has occasionally led to conflict. I remember as a kid, how we'd always stop at this restaurant on the way to Mt. Hood with my uncle and aunt. The walls were adorned with these awful dead animal heads that turned my stomach. Who wants to eat pancakes and sausage under the vacant gaze of a dozen dead deer? Not me. It always upset me so much I sure couldn't, which is saying a lot, considering I was (and am) a chubster, who enjoyed her food. I've just never been someone who could sit in a cow pasture e ating a hamburger. I can't eat meat, thinking about where it came from. It turns my stomach. I have always thought that I would become a vegetarian in a second if I ever had to hunt my own meat. I couldn't do it.

It is funny how we create ways to help ourselves ignore that the meal on our plate was once a living creature. We eat hamburgers, beef, pork, venison, mutton, and veal instead of cows, pigs, deer, sheep and calves. Of course, we also eat chicken, lamb and fish. I wonder why? It can't be because they're not as cuddly. What is cuddlier than a sweet, little lamb? That is probably why I have had a long standing no lamb/veal policy that started back in my early 20's when first learned about how veal calves spend their short, weakened existences in dark stalls tethered to short chains, living (if you can call it that) in their own diarrhetic filth.

Wait until they grow up to eat them, right? And yet . . .

I realize how hypocritical this is. Is it any kinder to wait until an animal grows up and experiences a lifetime of mistreatment before killing it? And it's not only the animals we raise for meat that are mistreated in factory farms. Chickens are kept in overcrowded, tiny cages. Dairy cows are so prone to mastitis (even if it is treated and homogenized, do you think those milking machines keep the infection out of our milk?) that they are routinely fed antibiotics as a preventive measure. Add this to the long laundry list of hormones, chemical and preservatives we put into all of our food in this country and it's a real wonder that we're not all pickled by now.

The thing I am most grateful for about having been drawn into the Silverstone/Masson/Velez-Mitchell web of Independence Day of learning is the deeper examination of what it is that I eat, not only terms of the meat question but also the types of frankenfoods I have routinely put into my body without thought. I am not ready to call myself a vegan or even a vegetarian. I won't even lie and say that I haven't jumped off the no animal product wagon a time or two, but my diet really has been mostly vegetarian (for some stretches even vegan) for the past month now. I am just a person stumbling along, trying to find the path to health, happiness and a clear conscience. The truth is that all of this is a learning process and I am still figuring out where I will land. What I do know is that making a conscious choice to eat in a kinder more sustainable way can only be right and beautiful.

And to end on a happier note, because this post has contained a lot of unpleasant material, if you have a Trader Joe's near you, their mango-vanilla soy ice cream is delicious with cake, fresh berries and mint.