Old MacDonald had a...menu...

As I stood in my kitchen tonight, picking the pinbones out of my dinner, (a center-cut piece of wild salmon - B has convinced me to eat only wild salmon after a conversation he had with an impressionable client - his take was that there are horrible dietary ramifications for consuming farm-cultivated spawn), I thought about at what point do you charge your child with the association between fuzzy and cute, and delicious and seared?

I almost called CR into the kitchen to start such conversation while I freed my meal from it's natural choking hazard, but then paused.

I grew up on a recreational (read: edible) farm. My first real association between what I pet with my hand, and what I put in my mouth, sent me into eight vegetarian years.

The brief: Nancy the ewe had triplets - she came down with a nasty case of mastitis (again, read: horrible, horrible, unimaginable as a former lactating female), and as a result, we bottle-fed her lambs...

Every day "Sweet Thing," my favorite little surrogate, would run at me when I arrived home from school, often with so much excitement that she would lunge herself through the squared-off fencing that separated her from our extended side lawn. I took it as a sign of love, when in reality, it was more her excitement to become one with the ghetto bottle that my father rigged up for her - a Forty, complete with a rubber nipple that was poorly attached to the oversized beer bottle...

At any rate, I loved my "pets," I loved raising them, but that ideal shifted when one day I came home from school, and asked my father "where's Sweet Thing?" - my father, thinking he was being funny, said "Check the freezer..."....so, there you have it. I knew about the kill...I witnessed the execution of countless turkeys, etc., but never a fluffy little thing I looked at as a pet...

So, I will refrain. As much as I know I want my kids to know where their food comes from...I hope to join a co-op for natural animal and vegetable supplies to bring our intake closer to home and healthy for our family...but tonight was not the night to make the connection....let CR have a little more time to crave the meatballs on his plate, and enjoy petting a cow at a visiting farm for just enjoyment alone...

Welcome to Needham

Scene from earlier today:

CR and I were taking a leisurely walk in the cold, with Baby C strapped to me in the Bjorn. It was mid-afternoon, and after over an hour of indoor games, and looking ahead to a welcome stretch before it got dark, I thought it might be a good idea to get outside for at least a stroll around the block.

We made it a couple of houses beyond a street that intersects our road, when I noticed a minivan backing up with aggression. With all the snow piling up along the roadsides, there is really only space for one car to get through at a time.

The driver of said minivan rolled down her window. I caught a glimpse of two occupied car seats in the second row of her family truckster, when I heard the following message uttered from the mother's dainty mouth:

I want you to tell me - what makes you think you are the most important thing in the world, BITCH?!

As the minivan hit Drive, a Jeep skirted by her, around the corner, parking three houses down from our place.

Angry Mom screeched down the road.

If someone, complete with children in the car, has that much anger and aggression on a side street without any other traffic, I cross my fingers I don't encounter her on any of my daily excursions around town...I am usually pushing a duallie with my kids in it...her random expletive will not even come close to what I would have to say if she screeched tires at me...