How Now Brown Cow? Or Turkey?

We had burgers on the grill last night.  I think I've purchased my last supermarket meat, though.  They tasted fine, but I'm about done reading Animal Vegetable Miracle, and think it's time to buy some local meat that hasn't been raised in a feedlot with lots of hormones.  And then stop buying that kind of meat forever.

I didn't think reading this book would necessarily affect my decisions about growing, purchasing, and making food for my own family.  I thought it would be more of an interesting read about how danged hard it was for this family to eat only locally produced food for a year.  And it was about how difficult some things were.  But mostly it was a labor of love for them, and the healthy aspects of doing so just sort of snuck in around the edges.  Then they got under my skin.

Also Barbara Kingsolver is not without her sense of humor, as folks who've read her other books know.  (The unfortunate phrase Jesus is Bangala! comes to mind.)  Well, last night I read her description of 2 turkeys attempting to make turkey babies.  Turkeys in the US are bred to live only 4-6 months, and new turkeys are all made with artificial help.  But Barbara wanted to keep a few around to have a small flock going.  So she discovered that turkeys now tend to imprint on things other than a turkey mother.  A human caregiver.  Or in this Tom Turkey's case, a watercan.  Oh the images. 

Barbara helps two poor clueless turkeys find love among their own kind.  She even arranges a turkey honeymoon suite with no watercans to distract Tom.  Then, though, she realizes that she is one of only a handful of people in the US who will get to watch the show if they succeed (and she admits that they don't have Cable where she lives) so she hangs around to see. 

Well, I won't spoil ALL the fun for you.  Whew!

I admit that this past month, with the bounty of fresh fruits and especially vegetables here in Central Illinois has made it easy to want to eat the best and healthiest.  Dinner included not just the burgers, but sweet corn, beans, organic lettuce.  None of it hard to come by or make.  Come next winter, I'll probably wonder what possessed me to want to change the way we eat.  And for this winter it's probably too late for the most part, since I am not (yet) a canning or freezing whiz. 

But today I think I will buy a breadmaker.  I used to make lots of bread by hand, no machine for this girl.  Then I became a PT and worked with my hands all day and the allure of kneading bread lost it's, well, it's allure.  Then I became a mom and the deal was sealed.  No homemade bread in ages.  But after this book I'm thinking a breadmaker would be a good idea for us.  So I will hit the thrift shops and then if that fails, probably bite the bullet and buy a new one.

If anyone wants to borrow my copy of Animal Vegetable Miracle, just let me know.