I asked my domestic helper for chicken for dinner last night.
Forgive the phonetics but I'm trying to create a little mood:
"Sir, wat CHEEK-en?"
"The live chicken," I said.
"Please 'chop chop' and 'fry fry,'" I added.
"Ah, sir," she said. "I know"
"Dee alibe one."
It is amazing what a difference a letter makes.
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Do they mean very traditional Chinese dish or step off if you don't know how to at least suck the head off a prawn?
Read MoreBut if you listen to a lot of researchers, they'll tell you great things are often stumbled onto. The internet grew out of NASA's communication needs. It was a solution to a problem, that was initially cobbled together, and iteratively just happened. But it wouldn't have grown if not for the basic research it grew out of.
So... I think this quandary directly applies to the topic of being mixed.
Read MoreAll Stevie cared about was fat, not meat.
I learned that from Stevie's perspective the arctic char was more trouble/energy expenditure than it was worth. Yes, us urbanites drone on about salmon sushi and smoked salmon, etc.
But All Stevie cared about was blubber.
Read MoreSo, if you've seen awful images and/or video of errant slaughterhouse practices (which do not represent practices I've witnessed first hand myself), no, the "shock and awe of animal mistreatment" is not one of the factors in my decision to annually give something up.
Ultimately, there is trace-element-ish crime in eating meat. As long as I elect to continue eating meat, I am responsible for this karmic-type offense. As long as I eat meat, I can't kid myself. Beef is frickin' cow. The animal is not just life support for its meat. It feels. For sure. And when it dies--I don't care how technologically sophisticated the kill room is, the animal will feel pain. The good ones make it momentary (measured in milliseconds), the bad ones botch it and often make a disgrace of the entire vocation and surely themselves.
Read MoreIn three weeks I will mark the 5th anniversary of a quirky tradition I’ve created for myself.
Every year I give up some type of food. It's not a cumulative giving up, whereby I'd slowly exhaust items permissible in my diet, never to return to them. I'm basically on an annual food rotation, cycling certain foods out during particular years.
I don't know exactly how this tradition started. That won't stop me from speculating a little later though.
In 2011, I gave up beef for a year.
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