"This is a meat free Kitchen" I heard myself proudly announce one late evening in front of my flatmates who weren't to impressed (or actually it was one of the boy friends of my flatmates who made the biggest face). Fuck, I could almost look at the tension in the room so I snook out. But crawled back the next day to apologise and explain.
You see, imagine yourself looking upon a corpse. A Human Corpse. Tell me how you feel. Focus. Look at it while I chop it up into small pieces, blood "accidentally" getting on your shirt and a not to pleasant smell starts to spread through out the room. While we walk over to the kitchen sink, hey you sill with me?, I grab the frying pan and grease it up real good. Now, Imagine the faint, at first, scent of human flesh fill the air. And you probably already know, I'm not the best chef, so sadly the freshly cut piece of meat gets rather burned on one side. According to survivors of the Holocaust its suppose to be a very sweet smell that penetrates everything and clings on to your hair even after a couple of showers. Sill paying attention? Now for the good part - watching someone actually sink their teeth into the cadaver.
Now you maybe got some idea of what if feels like when I think of you eating animals. And I see NO reason for this to happen at our flat where all three of us are vegetarians (I'm a vegan (youtube/wiki)). So NO. I could have had a bit more diplomatic approach the first time the discussion came up but I don't see the point in cooking up animal meat at the flat, no one who pays rent here is gonna eat it. Besides those who still eat corpses will survive one meal without, I'm living proof of that.
So I'll still say - Meat Free Kitchen.
Soundtrack : Bush - Out of this world (+ Lyrics)
Homepage of the day: http://www.goveg.com/
Youtube of the day: "10 reasons why I wont date a meat-eater"
5 comments:
not to be snyde but isn't i Holocaust?
=)
hahahaha! yeah, but of course! Ha, my bad =)
Not that I'm trying to change anyone's opinion but I think your analogy is somewhat rough at the edges. One might think you're deliberately trying to paint the picture of a bad experience. ;-)
For example, I don't know a lot of people who would readily drag a whole cow into the kitchen and start butchering it in place.
I would also use a bit of butter rather than a good greasing up, and I would certainly make sure not to burn the meat which one might argue would be a respectless waste.
And yes, the smell of burnt flesh is all-permeating and not very nice. Same goes for the smell of boiled cabbage. Still, the smell of properly fried meat - to me anyway - is good. I would even suspect that if you cooked up some human without me knowing what it was, I would find the smell agreeable. It has nourishment my body wants, it is fresh and warm, I think my natural response would tell me it's good for me if no one said contrary.
Would I eat a human? Probably not. I haven't ever been in a situation of such choice.
Would I foster an animal for food, give it a name, treat it well, and then kill it and eat it? Yes. I am at peace with that, and feel this is within my understanding of nature's order.
That said, of course I won't insist on cooking meat if it's your kitchen I'm using, now that I know the rules.
On my door I have a no smoking sign. My nostrils and my lungs and allergies appreciate that, and it neatly saves anyone from confusion.
If you can find (or draw!) a "no steak" symbol and put on the door I think that'd be a cool and tongue-in-cheek way of announcing your rules to others. And who knows, it might spark discussion in people passing by your front door.
If I were vegetarian in a flatshare, I'd totally have one of those stickers on the door. :-D
Take care,
René.
Of course your in titled to your opinion but that is why I wrote this post. You see, I do feel like there's a whole cow inside a kitchen when they are cutting her up.
I Can her her scream and I can smell it when the flesh is burnt or just fried and yes - its a horrible smell.
The post is not exaggerated but just how I feel when it comes to meat, especially in my kitchen.
And if you eat meat, how ever much I do respect you and like you dear René, then I must tell you - you're not an environmentalist. But I guess you already knew that one.
Love, isobelll
Aighty, fair's fair, thanks for the perspective.
With regards to environmentalist that is a difficult one to answer since people put a lot of individuality into that label. Am I an environmental activist? Nope. Do I buy my meat, milk, and veggies from organic and/or sustainable sources? Yes, mostly - I'm not perfect.
I would love to see the world's meat production shrink only to what is sustainable, and I am more than willing to pay the price for that luxury but I don't agree with the necessity to remove meat consumption completely. The question is not whether we can have a stable environment alongside meat consumption, the question is how much would be a responsible amount. This ties very closely in both with what else we do to reduce CO2 production but also what we find in the time to come is a good level. There are many things that need fixing on this planet at the moment, and CO2 is only one fragment.
I also turn off the light when I leave the room (futile as that actually is, given the way our power plants work - running the washing machine at night or in windy weather is much better), use public transport and my bicycle, and the amount of water, plastic, and paper I have saved in my life should make a Londoner blush with embarrassment over their puny effort. But this is not about everyone doing everything they can because that's probably an overallocation of effort compared to what else we could do better. This is about getting those that do next to nothing to start doing _something_, and what scares me here is not our current cut-back situation. It's the fact that we still don't know how to stop things from here. If we went to zero CO2-outlet tomorrow we'd still be fucked until someone had the guts to try out some of the current theories that currently aren't going anywhere because it's all talk and politics.
Aaahhhh.... rant detected. I must really stop this and get to the post office.
Hugs!