Comments for How to shuck an oyster

Comment on Coming home to roost by kathryn elliott

kathryn elliott — Sat, 25 May 2013 05:48:39 +0000

I’m so glad you’ve written this Charlotte, there is nowhere near enough thoughtful, considered and respectful discussion between vegetarians, omnivores and vegans. Everyone gets so damn prickly and self-justifying and full of why *they’re* right and everyone else is wrong. I find it all very tiring, tiresome and demoralising. A little more humanity and humility in these discussions would go a long way.

I’m yet to meet a person who is 100% consistent with their moral and ethical choices. I think we’d all like to be, but we’re not. Everyone sets their own boundaries and demarcation lines, the difference between what we think is right and wrong and yet we all, at times, cross those boundaries.

Comment on Coming home to roost by Mary

Mary — Sat, 25 May 2013 01:14:10 +0000

Well said Charlotte. I only wish we had a “Feather and Bone” in Melbourne, it would help my conscience as well as taste buds. On a lighter note, i read one of your postings where you talked about music to cook by. Can I recommend my favourite: “Cookin’ With The Blues” by Wes Mackey, a brilliant blues singer. It’s from his album Beyond Words.

Comment on Coming home to roost by Charlotte

Charlotte — Fri, 24 May 2013 10:41:40 +0000

Hah! I was JUST about to put in a quick edit to say of course the thing that was really wrong with that remark was to describe the poor fox as a brutal murderer. So not fair. Although foxy does carry the coloniser’s burden of guilt, of course …….x

Comment on Coming home to roost by juliebail

juliebail — Fri, 24 May 2013 09:22:13 +0000

Will no one speak for the fox?

Comment on Coming home to roost by Rosie

Rosie — Fri, 24 May 2013 05:33:28 +0000

What an excellent piece. Thank you. I was a vegetarian for years. 10 years ago I started a much higher protein diet, to lose weight, and realised very quickly that there is only so much tofu a girl can eat. So, I started eating beef and lamb, because they spend so much of their lives on grass, and free range chicken and pork. I struggle with the fish issue both cos of the destruction of fish stocks and the pollution problems with fish farming.

I won’t go back to being a vegetarian (and I find veganism just a bit extreme) as I function about 100% better on a high protein diet.

Comment on Coming home to roost by Bertina Egan

Bertina Egan — Fri, 24 May 2013 03:51:43 +0000

A quite superb article Charlotte. I, like a reviewer above, feel that I am quite hypocritical when I say I love cows and then eat steak, rare, I should add, osso buco etc. love chickens but love their eggs and flesh also, and love fish in the water but eat them as well, although I cannot bear to go fishing. Yes, we do cut short the life of cauliflowers (having one roasted and spiced tonight with meat I must add,) lettuce, tomatoes etc. by cutting them, pulling them etc. and I do wonder, as so many people say, that vegetables cry when they are treated this way! My poor husband was in Burgundy not so long ago when the hostess said she was going to give him a treat the following night and cook a special Burgundian dish of some sort of duck. He asked where the duck was coming from, to which she replied that it was the one he had been be-friending in the garden. Needless to say he found that he had an urgent phone call and had to go away to another part of France much earlier than he thought and said his farewells and departed!

Comment on Coming home to roost by Jamie

Jamie — Fri, 24 May 2013 00:20:23 +0000

Great read and very thoughtful, Charlotte. I am mostly with you all the way on this, but I do sometimes wonder why vego and vegan people make such a big moral distinction between our traditional food source animals (including fish) and plants. I’ve never heard a convincing case for distinguishing morally between plants and animals, other than some basis that feels that animals are somehow a lot more similar to we humans than quiet little unmoving plants are. The majority of vegetables we eat are immature plants denied the chance to live out a full life-cycle of growth, flowering and seeding. I don’t have a problem in the world with cutting short the life-cycle of a lettuce, broccoli or cauliflower, but I am aware that is what I am doing.

Comment on A Bundanon postcard (& some soup) by Gail E

Gail E — Thu, 23 May 2013 23:35:50 +0000

Charlie Poo,
congrats on the People’s choice…well deserved. (Although you should have also won the major prizee!) PS – re: soup…I reckon chorizos would be great added to the mix……

Comment on Coming home to roost by amandacurtin

amandacurtin — Thu, 23 May 2013 15:28:53 +0000

Very interesting reading. As a conflicted fish-eating, cockroach-whacking vegetarian, I am well aware of my own hypocrisies. Thanks for posting.

Comment on A Bundanon postcard (& some soup) by Charlotte

Charlotte — Thu, 23 May 2013 13:48:22 +0000

the wombats made it into the fiction too … shoulders have crept up again but every time I think of that scene they drop…