Carnivores of the world unite
By By Robrt St. John / food columnist
Nov. 26, 2003
Robert St. John is the executive chef/owner of the Purple Parrot Caf and Crescent City Grill in Hattiesburg and Meridian. He can be reached at robert@nsrg.com.
The holidays are a time for all good Americans to eat massive amounts of meat. It is our patriotic duty.
I am a devout carnivore. I love Thanksgiving and Christmas turkey, smoked ham, pork roast and beef tenderloin. Vegetarians have it rough during the holidays. Thanksgiving is to a PETA follower as Halloween is to a fundamentalist snake handler.
PETA, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, is asking its members to call the Butterball hotline and complain about the massive amount of turkey consumption that occurs during the holidays. According to its Web site, PETA would like us to eat Tofurkey for Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner.
Tofurkey is a weak and futile attempt to create an all-vegetarian turkey. Folks, God made turkey, and when he made it, he used meat (and on the eighth day, He made gravy). Tofurkey might make a big splash on Thanksgiving tables in San Francisco, Soho and the Belhaven district of Jackson, but not in my house.
The PETA Web site states: "This year, more than 45 million turkeys will have their beaks and toes cut off all so that they can become part of someone's Thanksgiving dinner."
These banner-waving leaf-eaters have it all wrong. We're not interested in turkey beaks and turkey toes. We want breasts and drumsticks. I, for one, am grateful that turkeys are doing their part to make my holiday dinner a memorable experience for me and my family. Now, pass the white meat, please.
While visiting the PETA Web site they tried to convert me to vegetarianism with this hard-to-pass-up sales pitch: "The explosion of vegetarian foods means that you can pop everything from bean tacos to veggie sausage' into the microwave and finish the meal with frozen non-dairy ice cream.' You can order a latte with soy milk in the neighborhood coffee shop, enjoy a veggie burger at the ball game, and stock your kitchen with wonderful products we could only dream of 20 years ago: flavored rice mixes; microwave tofu entres with exotic sauces; soy-based cheeses,' mayonnaise,' and milk'; and imitation meat products that can be used on their own or in your favorite recipes."
Yummy, where do I sign up? If this is the best PETA can come up with for the future of my eating career, then make mine "medium-rare." You're in big trouble when you are forced to use quotation marks to describe 75 percent of your food offerings if you eat it really fast, it kind of tastes like "ice cream." If you close your eyes, hold your nose, and think of your grandmother's tuna salad it sort of tastes like "mayonnaise."If you can get past the Elmer's glue memories, our soy-based "milk" almost tastes like the real thing.
During my short, but memorable, visit to the PETA Web site, the organization solicited my help in asking the Girl Scouts to stop killing animals. Whoa! These herbivores might be on to something. The Girl Scouts are killing animals, nowadays? This truly bothered me. My daughter is a Brownie Scout. Did I miss the troop meeting where they were handing out the ammunition? I wondered if the Girl Scout's traditional shortbread cookies and Thin Mints now came in the exciting new flavors of white-tail deer and pheasant.
Upon further investigation, it turns out that a remote Girl Scout troop in Alaska is teaching its members how to trap beavers. So, PETA, having nothing better to do with Alec Baldwin's membership dues, is asking their members to "write a polite but firm letter" to the head of the Girl Scouts asking this troop to cease and desist. I say, you go girls. Stay warm, wrap yourselves up in floor-length beaver pelts and keep the soy and tofu out of those cookies (the PETA organization headquarters are located in Norfolk, Va., a much warmer climate than Alaska).
I learned many things on the PETA Web site. A former Baywatch blonde, Pamela Anderson, begged me not to eat chicken. She also offered a recipe for Savory Pot Pie. The savvy reader will notice that I didn't say "chicken" pot pie. That's because Pamela Anderson's pot pie has no chicken in it. Her recipe makes use of such classic, pot-pie ingredients as: "faux chicken broth," "nutritional yeast flakes" and "faux chicken" (more quotation-marked food). If I were a vegetarian I wouldn't want to eat "faux" anything. I would stick to rabbit food real leafy and real crunchy. Ms. Anderson also offered a recipe for Pumpkin Patch Cheesecake using "12 ounces of Tofu" and "8 ounces of Tofutti cream cheese." Note: Silicon is not an ingredient in any of the PETA Web site's dishes.
I have joined my own, alternate version of PETA. I am the chairman of the Forrest County chapter of the new, improved, and more flavorful, version of PETA People Eating Tasty Animals. If you think I'm eating Tofurkey this holiday season, you can kiss my giblets.
