Having been a vegetarian for three or four years, I was quite reluctant to eat meat when my doctors suggested I do so. They said I needed protein and that meat was the easiest source. I didn’t want to eat meat or fowl or fish, even. Dairy was abhorrent including eggs. Although I could not see myself as vegan, because I think it is impossible to live in our world today without contacting exploitation of animals in remote ways, I do not want something to have to die in order for me to live. I know, plants are alive, too, but we don’t have the same relationship to plants that we have with an animal. Whether or not plants feel pain is a point still being debated, but we know animals experience pain. I am not opposed to slaughtering animals for food. After all, humankind has been eating flesh for millennia or more, so as a source of food it is not going away very soon. What I object to is cruel slaughtering methods, which we know take place everywhere flesh is processed. Humans seem to love having dominion over animals and show it, many times, by being purposefully cruel. Even kosher slaughtering is cruel if you look at it carefully; the animal dies slowly. Removing brains from the list of delicacies would allow a well-placed bullet to dispatch the animal instantly. CHOP THE CHICKEN’S HEAD OFF. Grandma and grandpa did that and their chickens did not suffer. (Flopping around after decapitation is the result of nerves reacting to the separation of the brain from them. It is not a reaction to pain.) Dispatch fish the same way as chickens. Don’t allow them to drown in air. Shell fish? Well, Orthox Jews have always looked at that as trayf, so maybe it is because of the way it has to die (head pinched off, boiled alive).
But enough about my preferences. I eat some meat now, sadly, but I hope after full recovery to go back to my vegetarian ways. Back to hospital fare being crud and whey. That it is crud is a matter of opinion, and my opinion complies. Of course the food isn’t dirty, if you follow the definition of crud. However, it is disgusting to me. Over cooked vegetables until they resemble whey. Hard-cooked meat, especially chicken, that needs a scroll saw to cut. Salads days old. Coffee, tea and PUDDING.
I emphasize pudding because it was a phenomenon, a fact whose cause is not clear. In order to explain their pudding I have to go back in time when I was about eight years old. My grandmother bought stuff from the Watkins man, who came to the house once a month for orders. If you’re my age or a little younger, you might remember the Watkins man. He sold flavorings, all artificial, dried mixes for cakes and rolls, and mixes, especially for puddings. Pudding concoctions were mainly sugar and a thickening agent, such as corn starch, and flavoring. As I recall he had three flavors: vanilla, chocolate and butterscotch. Well, when mixed with water the pudding was akin to bathtub caulking, shiny and pliant. It had to be scraped from a spoon with your teeth, and it lingered in your mouth like some slimy peanut butter, sealing the spaces between your teeth and welding your tongue to the roof of your mouth. A bad memory for me at my grandmother’s who insisted I eat lots of pudding so I’d grown into a fine man. My dad said it would put hair on my chest, and I think that is the only reason I gagged it down. (I never grew hair on my chest!)
Well, guess what? Watkins is still in business, sans the visiting sales person I think, and Methodist Hospital, Indianapolis, uses its pudding mix. With proper tweaking it can be used as plaster. Everyday, without exception, I got a dessert bowel of it. Dip in the spoon and watch it coat the surface, slithering around it like some dreadful mucusie kudsu. If I hadn’t been sick, I would have been sick after the encounter with pudding a la Methodist Hospital.
More tomorrow of the joys of eating at hospital.
