The Lambing Season

With the call of Spring only one week away and Easter a week after that, family gatherings are back on the menu after the post-Christmas interval. Now pardon me for sounding blunt and direct, but may I ask you a personal question: How do you like your lamb?

Cory Weber Photography, via Wedding Sparrow

No, it's not a strange question, and yes I do mean the cute cuddly baby sheep! Hmm, before the juices start running and baby onions start rustling up in the oven, you'll have me beg you to spare me the trimmings. Why? Because it just so happens that I like my lamb au naturel and with little else. That means I like it without the mint sauce and the garden peas, and the basting unless it's a typo and you mean 'basking', because I like my lamb basking in the sun (and not in gravy!). I like my lamb so much that it has got to run free through the herb garden and the potager, and across pastures new of tender grass, with no fear to be had, and a long life to look forward to. I am a vegetarian and I like my lamb alive!

Cory Weber Photography, via Wedding Sparrow

My lamb may lie on a carrot bed should its fancy be tickled by it, but not on a bed of steamed carrots. I shall be able to gaze into its eyes while calling it cute, and not have to bear the double standards once it has been slain and laid to rest on the Easter platter for all of us to share, cutting the chop and cutting away the idea that said meat belongs to an animal that we call cute and pretty and cuddly! So cute awww, it hurts! So huggable, it loses out in the food stakes, to the hug of the carnivorous diet...  

Pause and think: do you really need to eat a cute little thing like that little guy in order to satisfy your wondrous appetite? Or are you just getting so caught up in tradition and habit that you don't even realise what is going on on your plate anymore?

This coming Easter, may your 'Aww!' moment be your 'Aha!' moment. I'll meat you over the nut loaf.

Cory Weber Photography, via Wedding Sparrow

Cory Weber Photography, via Wedding Sparrow

Wait for it! There are more farm animal cuties to be seen, via exPress-o and A Playful Day! Meanwhile the story of a blind steer cutie called Oatmeal may well tip the die-hard meat lovers to forego steak for veg!