Eww...

As I have mentioned time and time again (yes, I am pretty much a broken record) I haven't had the energy this week to do much of anything. I was watching Giada de Laurentis on the Food Network this morning, so I thought I would go through some of my Italian cookbooks. What I have been doing with a couple of my French cookbooks is going through the books and making a list of recipes that I would like to try and their corresponding page numbers. I successfully make it through my Americanized "Italy the Beautiful" and "Tuscany The Beautiful" cookbooks, but a lot of their recipes were more Americanized than I was looking for (though I do love me some American Italian food from the Olive Garden from time to time...it can rock...ask Kendra!! Haha).

Anyhow, I have this really traditional old Italian cookbook called "Italian Regional Cooking." I've paged through it before, but not to a great extent. This time I start from the beginning. I pass the title page and get to the introduction and staring at me is a full page photo of a table with truffles being grated next to two poor little dead quail that are staring at me!!! I am Southern and I am used to having deer and hogs skinned in my front yard, but I really don't like to see my meat being prepared or barely dead. I think I could hear Chickadee hiding outside (My brother was raising Quail and a bunch of them got out, but one of them hangs around and is friendly so mom named it Chickadee...maybe it's friendly because mom's Cockatoo, Sarah Gail, got off the porch and she found her walking around outside with Chickadee asking her "Whatcha doing?").

I turn the page and am relieved to see fresh vegetables on a table with a view of some region in Italy. Pfew. Next page is safe too. Pfew. Then comes pages 12 and 13...Ahhh!! Page 12 features a beautiful spread of food and alongide it is a freshly dead guinea fowl looking at me! Oh...that's nothing...page 13 features dead pheasants as decorations for the dish with a stick at the back of the table a poor dead bunny rabbit haging with its legs tied to the stick...and yes...he's looking at me!! How is this supposed to want me to eat the food??!!

I have trouble enough on the rare occasions I eat veal thinking about the poor little moo babies trapped in tiny cages to give me my dish. I have thought about not eating meat because I feel bad for the poor little animals that are mistreated in order to make my food. I guess I feel less bad about eating animals that have been hunted because at least they were not raised in a tiny little cage and could frolick and live happy little lives and they didn't even know what was coming. In general, I don't really eat a whole lot of meat anyhow. I do eat beef, but mainly I eat chicken and seafood. For some reason I don't really feel as bad about eating chickens. I love having a nice rack of lamb with mint jelly, but I inevitably think of the cute little lamb that died for my meal. I ran over a bunny rabbit on my way home one night and cried the rest of the way home!!

I'm not a PETA advocate or one of those "meat is murder" people. I just don't really want to see my dead dinner next to my cooked dinner. In a recent issue of US Weekly they did an article on Mary Kate Olsen's fur clothing and bags. Now that's kind of crazy because these animals do suffer and it's not to nourish people. I can't imagine carrying a bag that took something like 12 adorable little chinchillas being brutally murdered to make!!! If it's not for survival, why kill animals just for their skin. On one of my musings of this topic at another time my friend's husband, Dale, so "thoughtfully" pointed out to me that they kill cute little moo cows to make my shoes, bags, etc.

So hopefully I can get through this cookbook without seeing a dead cow next to my food. I don't plan on cooking any of the quail or rabbit recipes anyhow. Now moving on from these disturbing images...