Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Sheep dinner


Today the Afghans asked that we buy them a sheep in celebration of a fellow marine's wife having a son. Good thing it was a son - I wonder how they would have reacted if he'd had a daughter...? Demand that he flay himself? I'm not sure. Slitting the animal's throat and letting it bleed out is the proper way for Muslims to kill something they're going to eat. The killing itself is not the only part of the process that's different; the meat is butchered so that nothing goes to waste - leaving you to dine on small scraps of fat, gristle, and meat attached to misshapen hunks of bone. In the States we're so far removed from the brutality that is required to prepare animals for eating, but then as Americans we're sheltered from reality in many ways these days, which I would say has helped lead to the nanny state we're living in. Or maybe I'm backward as to cause and effect. At any rate, it made a fine meal as usual.



1 comment:

Anonymous said...

We seemed to be much more humane in our killing or pigs and beef cattle, as Daddy just simply shot them in the head, thus, eliminating the extended suffering for the animal. This brought back memories of the Fall Slaughters of pigs. It was always followed by lots of work---stuffing sausage, stirring the "chitlins." making the lard for cooking, cleaning out the intestines for stuffing, and so on. I don't know that my stomach could handle all of that today. MOM