Sunday Night Links

Food politics are on my mind.  Our son Grey can't join us for the Thanksgiving holidays this year, so we sent a big box full of James's amazing orange-cranberry bread and chocolate-chunk cookies to Oberlin.  Since Grey's a strict vegan, they were made with Earthbalance and powdered egg substitute instead of butter and eggs.  And you know what?  They tasted great.  (Yeah, we sampled.) 

If you're pondering what to put on the table this Thanksgiving (if you celebrate Thanksgiving), you might be interested in how Gary Steiner, professor of philosophy and "a really strict vegan," breaks it down. 

From the other end of the spectrum, Jennifer Reese slaughters her own rooster and wearies of Jonathan Safran Foer's urban sighing.  Pragmatic and unblinking, she writes: 

From the age I could sit in a saddle, I knew what meat was.  My grandfather and great-grandfather were ranchers whose land was suited for little but running cattle.  From earliest memory, I accepted that a steer was also a steak the way I accepted that water was also steam.  It seemed neither mysterious nor tragic.  Animals died all the time in rural Wyoming, frequently for reasons that had nothing to do with us.

(Her essay at The Week is only available to subscribers right now but should be generally available in about a week.)

There's more I wanted to tell you, but James just announced that our dinner--a delicious carrot-curry soup, coincidentally--is hot and ready.  More soon!