Damien Mulley has opened the nomination process, for those of you who remember that post way back in the mists of time.
Rome finished yesterday. What am I supposed to do every Wed at nine now? No more Chicken or Lamb, no more Anto and Julius Caesar :( I think this is the reason soaps are so popular, they never end so you get to meet you fav characters several times a week. Course, there aren’t any character even one tenth as interesting as Posca’s nose on the soaps, but still…
Sorry, got distracted by imaging what a soap written by Joss Whedon would be like.
Listening to radio today and Ray and friends are discussing vegetarians. Back before Christmas Mairéad mentioned that she didn’t understand vegetarians. That she thought they were weird, and she could never do without meat. And people are texting in to complain now[1] that eating meat is killing innocent animals.
I’m all for animals having happy lives, but I like’s my meat. Nothing like a roast chicken. And sometimes all you want is a big hunk of cow. Mmmm, maybe I’ll buy some steak for dinner tonight, haven’t had any in ages.
Yum yum, pig’s bum,
cabbage and potato
Imagine life without rashers?
I do, however try to buy organic meat, when I can afford it. After all, who really wants to eat intensively reared chickens.
- did they save these texts til after the xmas break? why the delay ↩
It's only been 12 hours and already I'm lost without ROME. Must rewatch tonight. Parts anyway.
Updated Legio XIII Gemina last night just before the new one started. Only a recap but still.
And I could go for some intense Chicken right about now. Preferably in a soldier outfit. Yeah baby!
Ooookaaaay. So. Which category would you rather be nominated in? Cause a few seem to apply there.
I was vegetarian for 11 years and didn't miss meat at all, (well ok, maybe sausage rolls), but I only went back on meat after the combination of a friend's death and getting ill so it was doctor's orders. I told myself I'd give it up again when I was done with all the tablets but now I don't know whether I should or not. I also get asked to write for a food magazine from time to time reviewing restaurants so that might make the reviews for limiting for the reader. I still think I'll ditch meat at some point this year though.
We should all make an effort to buy organic meat and poultry where at least you know what it contains and that the animal had a chance of being killed humanely.
See, my take on the whole veggie vs. meat thing is that if everyone in Ireland decided to turn veggie, all of the available agricultural land would have to be turned over to growing crops etc. (and there still wouldn't be enough food to sustain the entire population without imorting far more than we do currently).
But more importantly and more crucially, there would be no economic imperative for farmers to keep livestock (except, perhaps, sheep – for wool). Cows, pigs, chickens etc. would become extremely rare in these islands – a few might be kept as unusual pets or in zoos but they would largely disappear.
As a conservationist, therefore, I feel a moral imperative to keep eating tasty animals. It's for their own good.
Dermo, In terms of feeding humans land is far more productive when used to grow crops to feed humans directly rather than when put to the use necessary to produce animals for humans to eat.
Nice one Dermo, tell the animals we are eating you for your own good ;)
I use that argument too, although we'd still have dairy cows wandering around. No sheep though, did you know that it makes no financial sense to shear most sheep nowadays.
Sinéad, if you didn't miss it then it is porbably healthier (provided you have a healthy veggie diet etc) to skip meat, purely because of the way many animals are farmed.
Anne, I'll let you use your own judgement, not like I'm going to win any (not fishing for compliments here btw).
NM, nothing like a bit of Chicken in the morning, afternoon, and evening.
But isn't a lot of land, especially in the west unsuitable for crops Cahony? I can't imagine anything growing in some fields near me where sheep and cattle currently reside.
But in fertile areas I'd say you are correct.
I didn't really get into that show Rome. I guess I couldn't get used to the idea of Romans with English accents.
I did enjoy the female nudity though. :)
UI any suggestions for what accents you would have liked? Think it would have been a lot harder to get used to Romans with American accents, and if they'd put on silly italian ones it would have been laughable.
Also, they didn't all have English accents. There were lots of different accents. And in I, Claudius they all had accents appropriate to the character's class or even region (e.g. people from Germania sounding like Germans). And in Spartacus, the slaves mostly sounded like Americans and the patricians like upper-class English.
All very appropriate. And they put a lot of thought into the accents in ROME – Titus Pullo sounded like any Geordie squaddie, Lucius Vorenus' accent changed depending on who he was talking to but kept the precise Scottish diction throughout, the patricians mostly sounded upper-class Brit and many of the Etruscan slaves sounded Italian. I felt it was perfect.
And Fence, baby, no Chicken at night? Though he'd probably be passed out drunk on the stairs at night so perhaps your solution (morning, afternoon and evening delight) is the best.
Once you have Chicken in the evening, he'll stay all night….
Unless you use him to impregnate you and tell him never to tell anyone and then send him off to his tent to annoy his superior officer with tales of how good you were…
Hey, mernember the get jealous thing? Well, there's pics on it of Croc Hunter in REAL LIFE which is kinda cool except that it's sort of weird seeing him do a sort of SeaWorld with trained snakes and crocs. It's a bit fakish. But check the pics.
I would have liked a posh English accent like they used to use in the films in the old days. The leading men sounded like they had come straight from Albert Square.
By the way, I like the colour scheme. Only the cool kids have blue blogs. ;)
Just changed it now UI, no longer xmas see.
Posh accents would have annoyed me. I liked Chicken's geordie accent. Couldn't imagine him as a posh git.
Well, the posh patricians had posh accents. The plebes had more working-class accents. Would not have made sense to have the posh accents on the common soldiers and men-in-the-via.
mmmmmm….meeeeeat.
we should not be eating tons and tons of meat but eating absolutely no meat just seems as ridiculous to me. Eating organic and farm raised meat seems much more humane too…
So Carl is obviously a veggie then ;)
Sally, I just had a lovely organic free range chicken breast for dinner. Yummy.
I had steak two days in a row. Now I feel full and satisfied. I had it the way John Wayne used to eat his "Cut its horns off and wipe its ass."
Bloody…
I've been veggie for nearly ten years now. I not only don't miss meat, it no longer registers my brain as food, so I could no more put a lump of meat in my mouth than you could a dog turd.
That said, I am not one of those evangelical veggies who will preach to you about the evils of meat eating (although I do like asking people if they enjoyed their putrifying animal corpse at barbecues!) But I do get annoyed with the "ah, ye can't have a decent meal without meat" brigade, which you get a lot of in Ireland. I'm not saying turn veggie, but there is an incredible amount of really good veggie food out there, so just try it from time to time, not to be politically correct, just because it is damned tasty! (Especially recommend Escape in Bray, probably the nicest veggie restaurant I have ever eaten in, bar none).
And M&S have lovely veg. spring rolls. Mmmm, tasty, tasty. They're very tasty.
That said, I'd still prefer my rasher sandwich, lots of red sauce.
I'm a bit of a food wuss myself and certainly don't think pig's bum sounds good…lol. Then again, admittedly, I've thought that folks in the UK eat weird things. Not just there, mind you, but that's one we hear about the most. I was a vegetarian for many years but eat a little meat now and again. That sheep pic you have is great!
It isn't really pig's bum, otherwise it'd be on that fear factor :) Just bacon.
More than half of what I eat does not have meat in it. I rarely have meat at lunch or breakfast. I usually have meat at dinner, though it might be fish or something cheesy instead. I never really think about food being vegetarian or not. I'd rather just think about whether it's nice or not. Would hate to cut a whole lump out of my diet by giving up meat. It's bad enough not being able to eat shellfish!
I love my meat. There's just no question about it. Meat is an essential part of my life.
Organic beef tastes better all right, but I get my chicken from a local producer at home and bring it up to Dublin – couldn't tolerate one of those watery balls of fatty poultry. you don't need organic to get that lovely chicken smell and that slighty yellow tinge to chicken meat which implies they've been fed outside and taste much better.
Sinead, I don't think organic animals are killed more humanely – they just live vegan lives.
As a farmer's daughter, I'm obliged to eat meat – we kill our own animals, so the route from Farm to Fork is very short.
Also due to family relations, and my father's penchant for breeding a new pure bred every few years, I have to buy tesco's aberdeen angus beef in Dublin, as he's one of the producers. You gotta keep the family business alive.
A farm near me at home had spent years breeding their herd (can't remember but think it was a dairy herd) only for one to get BSE. Whole herd had to be destroyed.
And the compensation was in no way near the value of the animals destroyed.
But on the plus side, we (as a country) virtually resisted the foot-and-mouth scourge!
Have nom'd you for best blogger and most humourous post (head in the gate one). Also best Arts and Culture blog for moving pictures.
Would have put you up for best blog entry but there are too many!
You just got nominated for a few things, including best comment, because that Jules one just couldn't go ignored.