Hw#7D

Chapter#17-My Grass-Fed Meal:A Week's Pay

Precis

I decided to cook a nice meal for my close friends of mine. I made chicken, corn, and chocolate souffle which turned out to be very delicious. The chicken did taste better than supermarket chicken much healthier and so was the corn. The eggs that i used for the souffle was like magic just so it was stiff and how orange it was. Everybody enjoyed the food i made and so was i.

Gems

On page 200 what stood out was how it said "when chickens get to live like chickens, they'll taste like chickens too" i think that is true if you liet chickens do what they want letting them live freely they will taste better when you eat them. Instead of keeping them caged up all dirty your chicken taste dirty and unhealthy (well we don't know that) but still. I like the fact that the narrator felt good about him making all this food and that it was so healthy even if it was lots of money and time worth spend. Moving a step forward to living a better life.

Thoughts/Questions

Reading about the chicken and dessert he made, made me actually kind of hungry because it sounded so good and the fact that he grew it himself was cool. I wonder if it would be possible to grow farms like the Polyface in New York State, i think that it is a good idea. The way he talked about the egg, i was like "wow" i didn't know when you crack an egg that its actually suppose to stay still. Usually when i crack my eggs it's yellow and slides all over the place. It's crazy how little things like that make a difference to the way your food taste.

Chapter#18-The Forest:Survivor Food

Precis

I decided to do another search for my food which was hunting, it reminded me of my times with my mother looking for clams and mushrooms. I learned which ones to eat. I hear about this guy named Angelo who was a hunter himself and loved to cook, he would be perfect to help me out. I would soon begin my hunting skills with Angelo and learn how to pick and shoot.

Gems

On page 208, it said "we cannot but pity the boy who has never fired a gun", i thought that was interesting because like the narrator said since i don't know how to use a gun or hunt or kill does that make him or anybody else less of a man? In a male's perpective i think that they should because that is what an all-american boy is supposed to have or so it says.

Thoughts/Questions

When i think of hunting, i think that it is kind of nasty because i guess what i see movies from people killing animals. I wonder if hunting is actually healthier than polyface because we don't actually watch the animals and have a farm, so does it make it better or worse? I never really thought about hunting myself, if it so much better people nowadays should learn how to do it, so that we can eat better.

Chapter#19-Eating Animals:The Meat Eater's Dilemma

Precis

Animals suffer just like humans but why should they be discriminated also. I decided to try out being a vegetarian it was not easy for me or anybody else. In the factory farms the animals have horrible conditions and nobody see what actually happens behind closed doors, just trying to make more money as possible. I agree that the way Joel Satlin raises his farm is particulary a good thing because the animals are to live happy and not suffer so when they do die they lived a happy life.

Gems

On page 227, the diagram stood out to me because it talked about basically how they were tricking the cows into killing them. Also it continued on the next page that when they stun the cows that not all of them die and they still killed them when they were alive which shows how much cruelty there is towards the animals and how much they don't care.

Thoughts/Questions

I agree with the narrator that Joel Satlin is the best solution because wouldn't you want the chicken to live a happy life with good conditons and which makes it happy food? No they just want to do what they want who cares how they feel and be cruel to them. Reading about how they have those stunner for the cows was kind of scary and how they are lifted off the ground but the cows cannot tell as well because they don't know what's going on. Where it said "McDonalds says it's ok if they have 5 percent error rate" i was like wow these people have no hearts at all.

Chapter#20-Hunting: A walk In The Woods

Précis

I thought hunting would be so exciting. I went hunting with Angelo on a friend's forest, the first time we went I didn't catch any pig but the second time I caught one it was a very big "prosciutto". At first when I caught the pig I was happy but then when I saw Angelo cutting it up I felt bad and a little remorse. After everything the pig was just food there wasn't nothing more to explain about it.

Gems

When the narrator was talking about him killing his first pig and being excited I thought that it was cool and interesting because i think that if I was in his postion I would feel the same.

Thoughts/Questions

I think that hunting is not that bad compared to how the animals get treated in the industrial factories because they live in worse conditons plus they get treated so cruel by workers. I was wondering if the pigs that they hunted where as santiarty as the pigs that Joel Saldin has raised?Do they hunt all the foods they eat or just meat?

Chapter#21- Gathering:The Fungi

Precis

My next adventure was to find edible mushrooms and Angelo was able to help me the ones i caught were called chanterelles. Mushrooms are atcually valled fungi and they help a lot with the earth and the life cycle. I took another trip hunting for morels, at first i didn't know what i was getting myself into but by the end i was so happy it felt so good like the first time i hunted the pig.

Gems

On page 254, where they were talking about four different fungi and how each of them do something essential to our life i thought that was kind of interesting. Because peronally when i think of fungi and mushroom, its a complete turn off for me and i never really knew they had an objectibve towards us.

Thoughts/Questions

I never really thought that hunting mushrooms was such a big deal as they make it seem in the book because most people don't eat it. Are the mushrooms actually much healthier than the industrial meat and other things that people eat? Honestly i would not eat mushrooms i don't think they do anything for me or have a purpose to making me healthier.

Chapter#22-The Perfect Meal

Precis

I decided to cook a prefect meal from all my hunting gathering for all the people who contributed and helped me with it. Thinking about the whole process i thought i would be unable to accomplish it but by the end of it all the meal was great and evrybody seemed to enjoyed which made me happy as well.

Gems

"It wasn't the cooking that made it perfect, but the connection we felt with the food, with the place we live and with each other" i thought that what he said is kind of powerful because lots of times when people eat food they want to feel that connection. How can you feel that though knowing the foods you are eating contain all these bad chemicals and unhealthy substances?

Thoughts/Questions

I thought that this last chapter was a very good way to sum up everything that happened in the book. Like the author said by tomorrow he would still go back to supermarket and get his reuglar food products because it would be so hard to maintain cooking like that. If the food industry didn't make it so hard and do all these bad things we wouldn't have to go out of our way to be doing the things we do to be healthy.