Carnivore

First, I apologize for misspellings; typing this on my phone.

Tonight for dinner I tried a new recipe: Tandoori Turkey Kebabs, which by the way turned out fabulous. Yay for another yummy recipe! But I digress.

When shopping for the turkey, the store didn't have any turkey breasts or anything, just bone-in skin-on drumsticks. They were on sale too, so I bought them anyway, thinking I'd just remove the skin. Today when I started preparing the meat, I quickly realized my mistake. The skin was easy enough to remove, but I hadn't thought aboout all the tendons in the drumstick. Determined to use the meat as planned, I forged ahead.

By the time I was done getting all the meat off the first drumstick, it was all in weird little pieces. Thank goodness I was doing kenabs. I have a newfound respect for butchers. The second drumstick was quite a bit better, and by the third, I'd finally figured it out.

Never having killed an animal or prepared meat any more than a "whole" turkey/chicken (meaning innerds in a little bag inside), as I was tugging off all the skin, and hacking away the tendons, I felt a twinge of sadness at the loss of the life of the poor turkey whose poor leg I was butchering so poorly. I can only imagine what it would be like to kill and butcher a full animal. Suddenly I felt so carnivorous, and thankful to be at the top of the food chain. But not just that. It just felt weird chopping up something so miraculous. I mean, studying the way the leg was formed, echoed my belief in God, our Creator.

It also totally grossed me out because it reminded me of my first semester of college in anatomy lab, working on human cadavers. That was something that didn't bother me at all then, but over the years I've become more and more squeamish when it comes to anything inside the body. As my mind paralelled the turkey tendons and muscles to those in a human, I very nearly had to stop. But then I reminded myself it was just a turkey, and it is ok to eat it; God gave us animals to eat.

Still, after tonight's dinner prep, I'm thankful for professional butchers who do all that for me and put my meat in a nice little package in the store. I love meat, but from now on, maybe a little less cleaver action.