Cows

Long before I had kids, my sister told me about a conversation she had. She heard her young daughter explain to her son, “There’s a chicken that goes ‘bawk bawk’, then there’s the chicken you eat.” My sister corrected her, saying, “That’s the same chicken.” Her daughter insisted she was wrong.

I remembered this when my kids started eating meat, and with all the talk about people not knowing where their food comes from, I wanted to make sure they knew. So I explain that ham is made out of pigs, the chicken we’re eating are like the ones our neighbor has, and beef is cow.

Specifically, the beef we eat is either from a 4-H Fair steer, or a steer of our own. We had a steer butchered last year. Kris named him Ribeye.

We were grilling and a friend said she wouldn’t eat our burgers (though she normally had no problem with eating meat), because she wouldn’t eat anything with a name.

“Do you think the eggs that went into those brownies you’re eating had names?” another friend asked her, chewing away happily.

Sometimes our kids use the names too correctly. “Can I please have more cow?” they’ll ask at dinner. At a restaurant last night one asked about a pizza with ham, “Can I have more piggy pizza?”

I’m glad it’s this extreme rather than the other. In fact, they were in a Christmas program at church today. Someone asked my son what he was going to be in it.

“I’m going to be one of OUR cows,” he said, meaning he was black and white. The other son pretended to eat him.