Happiness is in your Tail

I heard a wonderful story the other day, that a friend who read my blog was willing to share with me. I'd like to now share it with you...

A wise old alley cat saw a young kitten chasing its tail one day. He asked the kitten what she was doing.

“I am chasing my tail. I went to Cat College and learned that happiness is in my tail,” was her reply.

Nodding to this, the old alley cat watched a few minutes more as the kitten chased her tail. After a moment, he spoke up again, "If you don't mind my saying so, little kitten, but it doesn't look like you're getting very far in your endeavor."

The kitten stopped for a moment. "Well I suppose once I catch my tail and have my happiness, I will move on to what I really would like to do."

The old alley cat came down from his perch to stand next to the kitten. When he spoke again, he said, “I did not have the benefit of higher education, but through the years I’ve learned that, indeed, happiness is in my tail. But I have always chased the things that I know with all my heart I've wanted to do, instead of circling after my happiness and going nowhere."

He smiled and finished with, “and my tail has always followed right along after me.”

Just like the kitten in the story, so many of us are led to believe that what we really want out of life is something that may not be what we truly want. You may know someone, or you may be someone, who hears how making so much money, or living one place or another, or owning a certain something, will lead to happiness, when really, it's something you don't really care to have or do.

I stress the importance of asking yourself what you want, instead of following what others tell you. If you live your life trying only to earn the respect and admiration of others, it won't be long before your true wants surface anyway, and you may have all the thumbs up in the world, but no happiness for yourself. The key is not to be afraid to go against the grain from time to time. This life does not come with an instruction manual that says how much money you have to make, or where you have to live, and it certainly doesn't tell you in which way living your life would lead to true happiness. That part of living is within us all, and we should respect our own opinions.

It is my wish that all of you recognize and embrace what you truly want.

Be good.

Why I'm no longer a vegetarian (part 1)

Before I begin this topic of discussion, I want to make it perfectly clear that I have nothing against vegetarians, or anyone wishing to become one. In fact, going veg twice, each for about 6 months a piece, was one of the best things I've ever attempted, and I'm happy I did. I learned so much about cooking and seasoning and healthy alternatives to dishes I loved that I wouldn't trade any of it. But the fact remains that today, I am (quite obviously if you're following along this blog, at least) not a vegetarian. So what happened?

I guess first, I should explain that not eating meat was a choice I made not for some political agenda. It wasn't because I love animals and can't bear the thought of one dying in the name of food production. My religious beliefs tend to run along the vein of God could care less what you're eating, with the possible exception of another human, so it wasn't that either. No, I went veg because I have a bad heart, and am happy to report the first time around, it did make a difference. The second... well...

I think I've mentioned before that frustration sets in when you have a health problem, make sacrifices for it, and it still doesn't go away. I've since come to realize, and you may have already picked up on this, that sacrifice is the last means by which you should exact any positive change in your life. Again, I consider it needless suffering. And I gotta tell you -- 6 months without so much as a bite of cow, pig, fish or chicken will certainly come to feel like suffering for even the noblest of causes, sooner than later.

So, to put that to rest and make a long story slightly less long (I'd write a shorter blog entry, but I'm afraid I can't find the time), pro-veggie and vegan fanaticism pamphlets will tell you that great apes such as gorillas, our not so distant cousins, need no meat in their diets to survive. And this is true. As true as humans do not "need" meat in their diets -- another thing any avid vegetarian will tell you. However, an even closer relative of ours, the chimpanzee, does eat meat. Does he need to? I'm not sure, but I know he does eat it. And maybe there are folks who will tell you that since I was raised on meat, the only reason I crave it is because I know it, not because I need it... but whether it's been conditioned to do so or not, I am convinced my body knows better what it needs than I do. I'm not saying you can't overcome it -- but go a few weeks without meat, and I guarantee, out of the blue or not, you'll get some intense pangs of hunger for it. I'm serious, try it.

So, my health having stayed in relatively the same crummy condition it was in before I went veg throughout my last no-meat excursion, left me open to take the plunge with animal carcass eating again. But I do admit that I enjoyed the perks of being able to proclaim myself not only an avid animal lover, but a vegetarian as well. They seemed to go together. And I can attest first hand that it was nice not having to worry about the evils of factory farming while on a meatless diet. But then I came to a small epiphany wherein I realized I was pretty sure I could still enjoy all these feelings of being a proper animal lover, vegetarian or not.

Hear me out, and feel free to tell me I'm crazy later. But in this age of mass-produced vaccuum-sealed pseudo-meat products and the unecessary cruelty that comes with it, it came to me that maybe... just maybe... it's as good to be, or better to be an eater of good, locally raised, organic, wild-caught, or otherwise free-range meats than it is to be a vegetarian.

Falling on the same principle as (and I'm sure you've heard this a thousand times) cows we are currently raising on farms suddenly liberated from their pens are about as likely to go feral and live in harmony with the enviroment as lobsters set free in the back yard of your mountain cottage, is the idea that yes, hands-off factory farming is bad and should be on its way out, but farming itself is a good thing. Let's face it -- if we did let all those cows go, they'd meet their ends, likely very quickly, by way of predators, disease, and I suspect most common, starvation. Yes, these methods are natural ways for things to die... but are they humane? As the rational thinkers of this planet, we humans owe it to the creatures we are eating to provide three things: A healthy, safe environment and a good life to live, a swift, merciful death, and the utilization of as much of the beast as possible for food or other things. This is the basis of good husbandry. If you ever eat something that was mishandled, poor quality or otherwise not good meat and say to yourself, "something died for this?" then you've got the idea.

Undoubtably, you've noticed that this is "part 1" of my argument, as I do have other reasons for not remaining veg. But to concentrate on a few at a time will no doubt produce a more interesting read. I have enough trouble writing short blog posts as it is. Hehe.

To summarize the ideas I've presented here in my first installment, vegetarianism is not bad, but perhaps an extreme tactic when it comes to maintaining a morally responsible, healthy, animal-rights conscious society. It's not easy for everyone to give up meat outright. It'd be disastrous to let all those cows and pigs and chickens run free if we all gave up meat tomorrow (not saying that's on any pro-veg agenda, but seriously, if a species has been bred to where it is not viable outside human care, does that make it not worth maintaining?). Our extensive farm industry is worth supporting -- the environmental consequences of what we may think of as "small farming" are far less than intensive factory farming, and the benefits include a better end product, rejuvination of threatened or endangered species, and I couldn't think of a better laboratory for scientific breakthrough in the name of further understanding of the world we live in and the creatures we share it with (certainly a self-sufficient farm is a great example of its own little ecology) and how to be better custodians to all of them. I feel factory farming should be slowly phased out, and the solution I've come to that makes the most sense to me, is not to give up meat altogether, but to seek out the good stuff from good producers, and let the industry know I'm not interested in the rest. I think if enough of us did it, we'd not only eat better, but we'd feel better about supporting, what is in essence, a greater good.

More to come on this topic, in future editions. Until then, be good.

Hanging around for too long or until it's too late

When I was a little girl, I remember waking up on certain autumn and winter weekends to my mom alone in the house... as my father had gone hunting. And I couldn't imagine being more excited to see dad walking up the driveway, clutching one, two, or sometimes three pheasants or grouse he'd shot in the wee hours of the day. I knew the birds were always dead -- often a little bloody, sometimes headless, but to me it was akin to him bringing home a new pet.

I loved the dead ringnecks -- how their pearlized feathers changed from grey to purple to green and blue in the light. I liked their long tailfeathers, and my dad would always pluck a nice one for me to keep from each bird. He'd let me hold them and take pictures of me with my pet dead birds, which to me was as good as if I'd bagged them myself.

After I was done mauling the day's haul, we'd string them up by their necks in a shady spot on the porch. I remember my father telling me that some hunters had told him they hang their birds up until their bodies come loose from their heads. Now friends, this didn't sound very appealing to even me, the six-year-old would-be dead bird keeper. Dad agreed, and told me it wasn't a good idea to wait so long. When I asked how long he would let his birds be strung up, he simply told me, "until the time was right".

In my older years, I've come to recognize sportsmen who profess to hanging game until heads pop off are usually telling a tall tale, and if not, might harbor an unsanitary taste for rotten meat. One point behind hanging game is to amplify the flavor, known as gaminess, throughout the critter. Animals in the wild get to eat all sorts of things farm-raised animals don't, and leaving the beast intact, hung from a ceiling after death allows the process of decomposition to take over, and further distribute flavors (most obviously from things still left in the digestive tract) to take their final course through the body. Quite generally, the longer the hang-time, the gamier the meat.

But how long that hanging lasts should be up to the individual tastes of the preparer, and they should be able to recognize when waiting much longer will kill their efforts and produce a bad-tasting or inedible end result.

Of course there's a life lesson in this, as well. Did you expect anything less? Hehe... I know I've posted the importance of letting go in my blog before, but one might then ask, when is the proper time to step in again to reap the benefits?

Indeed, leaving it up to God is probably the harder of the two to get used to practicing, since we humans are hands-on do-it-ourselves beings. But knowing when to step in can be a bit tricky too. We've all heard the story of the man and the flood, haven't we? No? Well in that case...

It had been raining for days and days, and a terrible flood had come over the land. The waters rose so high that one man was forced to climb onto the roof of his house.

As the waters rose higher and higher, a man in a rowboat appeared, and told him to get in. “No,” replied the man on the roof. “I have faith in the Lord, the Lord will save me.” So the man in the rowboat went away. The man on the roof prayed for God to save him.

The waters rose higher and higher, and suddenly a speedboat appeared. “Climb in!” shouted a man in the boat. “No,” replied the man on the roof. “I have faith in the Lord; the Lord will save me.” So the man in the speedboat went away. The man on the roof prayed for God to save him.

The waters continued to rise. A helicopter appeared and over the loudspeaker, the pilot announced he would lower a rope to the man on the roof. “No,” replied the man on the roof. “I have faith in the Lord, the Lord will save me.” So the helicopter went away. The man on the roof prayed for God to save him.

The waters rose higher and higher, and eventually they rose so high that the man on the roof was washed away, and alas, the poor man drowned.

Upon arriving in heaven, the man marched straight over to God. “Heavenly Father,” he said, “I had faith in you, I prayed to you to save me, and yet you did nothing. Why?”

God gave him a puzzled look, and replied “I sent you a rowboat, a speedboat and a helicopter... what more did you expect than that?”

So I think the story illustrates several things that I like to think are very important to living happily in this world. Having a goal, having faith and letting it come, and accepting it graciously when it does. The man in the story had a goal of being saved from the flood, and he had faith that he'd be delivered from it. Good for him on both points. However, he failed to accept the means which would get him his goal, largely because it was not the way in which he'd hoped it would happen. In the end, he didn't get it at all.

I've said before that it is so important to let go of the means by which you think the thing you want will come, as it puts limits on this world and a higher power to bring it to you. In a more palpable sense (perhaps literally), my dad knew his pheasants were done hanging because he kept his eye on them. Now, he didn't take them down and cut them open... but as any good purveyor of good food would, he put a cautious nose to them each day and night, and would gently feel their flesh for the right sign. You can actually smell the gamy quality of meat after a short time, and a gentle pat over the body can tell you much about tenderness, of course. Certainly too, if something had gone amiss, or one of the birds was rotten, he'd know right away to discard it as soon as possible, to boot.

So if you have some things you've placed into God's hands to take care of for you, and you have kept an eye out, maybe found the timing is exactly right, or you've discovered a better path than you knew to take before, then go for it. Don't wait around until the head comes off your pheasant because someone else told you so, hehe. And definitely don't keep a rotten bird hanging, either! Move on, and keep your eyes ever open to opportunity. I guarantee it won't be hard to miss, and you'll know when to act.

Be good.

You (and I) are the stuff stars are made of

Hey kids, just a few words before I hit the road, tonight.

The world we live in, at its most basic point, is energy. Everything around us is energy. The ground we walk on, the air we breathe, the stars in the sky, all just bundles of energy. You are made of energy, too.

Since you and the earth and the stars are made of the same stuff, you can affect each other. And not only can you pick up on energy being sent through you, but you can also send it out to the world around you. If the energies you feel and project are positive, go with them. If they are negative, choose another path.

I pray that each of you, when you come to a crossroads in your life, choose the path that feels best for you -- the one which may not offer the most of something nice you may not want, but which clearly will offer the things you truly do want. This is why it's important to know what it is that you truly want. Noting that you cannot define the path to get to it, but will lay it in God's hands to guide you to it. You'll know it's right when it feels right.

I choose my path to return home because it makes me feel good. It makes me feel better when I think of all the benefits that can come from it. I was offered a nice job with some nice benefits, to stay in the urban jungle, but it didn't feel right. What I wanted was more time outside of an office, and away from the city. In staying, I would have had a little more of something nice that I didn't want, and none of what I wanted. And when I thought about staying, despite the nice benefits, it made me feel so far away from my real goal, that it nearly made me depressed.

So take the time tonight to meditate. Find your real wants. Focus on them. Don't worry about how you will achieve them, or little details about who will bring them to you. If you want wealth, think about having it, and not the method to which you'll get it -- people win lotteries and have million dollar ideas, and find checks in the mail from places they weren't expecting every day. If it's love, then focus on yourself in the perfect relationship, and not the person you think will give you that (but feel free to use them as a guideline). If it's health, then think of yourself as being perfectly healthy and realize heart disease, cancer, and other disease can disappear with no warning, and there are doctors in this world who define incurable as curable from within.

Most of all, be good. I will see you when I land back home.

Fried brains... if that's your thing

I know I've already said in this little blog of mine that there are many many parts of a given animal which can be eaten. I think I've also said that there are few of those which aren't worth your time. Naturally, folks want to know which ones were excluded from the latter category, if I had any to name.

And I do. Very few. And the first may or may not be a surprise. I'm going to out one organ that, fair enough, many folks really love and swear by. But hold on, because my reasons are not just based on personal taste. So to you I say that I have found brains to not be worth your gastronomical adventuring, and without further ado, here are my fair warnings...

Brains, while a firm, pink, and, I think if you take the time to forget what they are, beautiful looking piece of offal, suffer setbacks that may not deter aficionados, but could certainly put off would-be enthusiasts to the point where they may like the end product, but hate going through the process of getting there.

Plain and simple, the biggest problem with eating brains is acquiring brains to eat in the first place. I'm going to reference one of my favorite food texts here, The River Cottage Meat Book, and say that in the United States it's difficult to find a good butcher who is able to hand over some brains, and if you're in the UK, even harder. The brain of a given animal -- pig (most common), sheep, or cow, takes time to dislodge from its proper place in the skull. Now, any good butcher will sell you a whole hog's head (don't believe me, go to your local butcher and ask. I guarantee he'll enthusiastically offer to put you on a calendar for one, if he doesn't already have something fresh) but think of it this way: hog's head is sold per pound, and if you're requesting one, you often want it for headcheese, or something else which requires all components of the head be intact, so ruining a perfectly good whole hog's head to remove some brains cuts the butcher's profit quite drastically. To contrast, if you wanted the hog's head for its brains alone, you'll be spending substantially more money than just buying a brain by itself. And did I mention it takes some serious tools to wreck the skull of a large mammal? The preferred method would be to get an artisan who is skilled with a powersaw to dig in for you, if he could stand it.

Of course, with the onset of mad cow disease (bovine spongiform encephalopathy or BSE) finding brains of cows has become drastically harder, as have those of sheep. Currently, pig's brain is your best option, either in the US or the UK, but even then, no guarantees.

A final thought. One brain serves one person. Not saying you're likely to run into a party of folks eager to sit down to some brain sandwiches tomorrow, but if you were, you'll be multiplying your efforts to acquire a brain a piece, that many times over.

These, in my opinion, are the reasons to avoid brains. However, if you're up for acquiring a whole pig's head, and want to make several dishes (pig's cheek is fantastic, and I've heard crispy ears are as well) then I say dig in.

So what if you happened to get your hands on some good quality fresh brain? Then what?

Due to their creamy consistency, I recommend frying above all else, to get a good mix of texture, but really, there are several ways to prepare them. Floured, fried in olive oil, with fresh sage and capers is something to experience. The recipes found in the River Cottage book mentioned above, should be a good starting block for you. I've included a link to the book on Amazon.com for the adventurous diner, to the right.

Be good.

The honeybee mass exodus

Naturally, you can't have a post about honeybees without mentioning this little tidbit of news. I thank those of you who wrote me after my last post, concerning the plight of the honeybee in America. They are definitely a good thing we can't live without.

Anyway, you may or may not heard that across these United States, and the world, bees are abandoning their hives, flying off never to be seen again, and dying. Creepy? Indeed. Every third bite of food you eat is the direct result of a honeybee's pollination. And at this point, more than 25 percent of the western honeybee population has disappeared. The phenomenon is called Colony Collapse Disorder, and there's really no rhyme or reason to it. Possible explanations include a virus targeting the bees specifically, certain pesticides, mites, and other factors, but again, nothing has been proven at this point.

So far, a few companies have stepped forward to help out, including Haagen-Dazs and this company which offers a Beekeeper starter kit.

I'm no beekeeper (yet) but here are a few things we all can do to help:

1. Buy local honey and eat more of it. Americans don't eat alot of honey, which may or may not be a shock. But what we do eat is largely imported. By keeping beekeeping viable, you keep bees available, so hunt down some local honey producers in your area. Don't know where to start? What... you've never Googled something before???

2. Eat organic and garden without pesticides. Better yet, eat from your own organic garden. Should be self-explanatory. Pesticides screw things up -- large agricultural products and small backyard garden chemicals alike -- and all of them will affect bees because bees hang out with a wide variety of plants!

3. Write to your local government. You don't need to know how to fix it, and neither do they. They just need to be aware that you are concerned.

4. Plant a bee garden. If you don't have a garden yet, you'd better get one. And you'd better be growing some flowering fruit plants! Okay, fine. You don't have to do either, really. But if you do have a garden and aren't growing fruits, you can still try out some plants bees are attracted to, such as English Ivy; Hummingbird Mint; and borage. And whether you have a garden or not, try leaving some of your yard "wild". Bees don't discriminate between weeds like dandelions and plants you are tending to.

5. Raise bees. Okay, fair enough, 4 ways to help without becoming a beekeeper yourself, but if you've ever been interested in trying it, why not? You may surprise yourself with how easy it is to start a colony that will basically take care of itself. Many people turn a small fascination into a passion, and enjoy their new hobby and the fruits of their labors as well.

Please pass this blog post on to any who will hear it. This still isn't big news in the US, but it probably should be. And if all of us did just one of the above items, we'd make a positive impact not only on bees, but the environment in general.

Bee good. :)

How not to live your life as told by an insect

I'm one of those people who feels for an animal in distress, no matter how big or small. I wasn't always. There was a time not too long ago, 50 to 100 years I'd suppose, wherein scientific texts detailing methods for proper vivisection taught that the cries of live animals, split open and dying slowly on a table while their insides were toyed with, were not indication of tremendous pain, but merely the sounds of machines breaking. Simply put, when you read something like that, you know immediately that it's wrong, and you never want to take life, any life, for granted again.

So today there is a bee in the house, and she's frantically attacking one of our windows. She reminds me of a story I heard -- I think it was one told by speaker/philosopher and otherwise really deep old guy, Bob Proctor. It's a great story, and I'd like to retell it now, thanks to the inspiration from this little animal, hehe.


I’m sitting in a quiet room at the Milcroft Inn, a peaceful little place hidden back among the pine trees about an hour out of Toronto. It’s just past noon, late July, and I’m listening to the desperate sounds of a life-or-death struggle going on a few feet away.

There’s a small fly burning out the last of its short life’s energies in a futile attempt to fly through the glass of the windowpane. The whining wings tell the poignant story of the fly’s strategy: Try harder. But it’s not working.

The frenzied effort offers no hope for survival. Ironically, the struggle is part of the trap. It is impossible for the fly to try hard enough to succeed at breaking through the glass. Nevertheless, this little insect has staked its life on reaching its goal through raw effort and determination. This fly is doomed. It will die there on the windowsill.

Across the room, ten steps away, the door is open. Ten seconds of flying time and this small creature could reach the outside world it seeks. With only a fraction of the effort now being wasted, it could be free of this self-imposed trap. The breakthrough possibility is there. It would be so easy.Why doesn’t the fly try another approach, something dramatically different? How did it get so locked in on the idea that this particular route and determined effort offer the most promise for success? What logic is there in continuing until death to seek a breakthrough with more of the same? No doubt this approach makes sense to the fly.

Regrettably, it’s an idea that will kill.

Trying harder isn’t necessarily the solution to achieving more. It may not offer any real promise for getting what you want out of life. Sometimes, in fact, it’s a big part of the problem. If you stake your hopes for a breakthrough on trying harder than ever, you may kill your chances for success.

Author: Price Pritchett

How many times have you been so sure that you knew you wanted something, and seemed to be on the right path to get it, but kept hitting road blocks? It's human nature to try harder, certainly, and sometimes, the effort is rewarded. But how many times have you lingered on one thing, thinking it is the correct way, the only way, and it's so close, and if only this would happen or that would happen, you could stop suffering and have it at last..! How many times have you tried harder to the point of exhaustion, questioning if what you truly wanted was worth it, in the end?

You weren't put on this planet to suffer through life. I was asked what I meant by my last post having stated you don't get what you want from this world by going out of your way to get it -- and this is pretty much a good introduction to that. It's important to note that your want shouldn't change, but you should be certain about what it is that you truly want -- because life has a way of getting that to you, but perhaps not in a way you anticipate. Therefore, you should be okay with giving up the method, or perhaps the direction you are following, or the career you have, or even the person you're betting on to bring it to you, when truly, you are only hitting roadblocks and suffering by fixing your efforts on that method, direction, career, or person. Step back a moment. Then look for signs of another way. Once we recognize what it is that we truly want, not only are we more open to obtaining it, but often, it's right around the corner anyway!

I took some time a little while later, allowed the bee to climb into a cup, and released her outside.

All life is precious. This includes your own, and you should respect it by knowing when to cease your own suffering over something you think is required to get to where you want to be. Don't wait for a hand to help. Don't wait for a cup to fall from the sky and take you to what you want, hehe.

Most of all, don't be afraid of taking your focus off the means, when it is the end that you should concentrate on.

Be good.