Meatless Monday

Ponyo loves HAM!!
(image found on a Google search for: ponyo ham)

I'm not saying this happens every single Monday, but most Mondays around here, we have a meatless dinner. Hence, Meatless Mondays. I didn't invent it - it's a new craze. Seriously, google it.

So tonight we were eating the veggie fried rice I cooked up and having some dinner conversation. I noticed Roxy picking through and eating all the eggs up first. She looks at me and asks if we are wasting all the baby chick's lives because we are eating the eggs. (She's a smart one, this one. And so compassionate!)

I explained a little about fertilized and unfertilized eggs and assured her that the eggs we were eating, were definitely not baby chicks. She felt better.

... for about 10 seconds...

Then she looked at me with tears in her eyes and said, "And then the farmer kills the Mommy chickens so we can eat chicken for dinner! We are wasting their lives!"

She started crying sobbing. I started crying.

There was talk about we need to figure out how to make the farmers stop killing the animals just so we could eat them. Something about a Food President making the farmers stop (because there must be a food president). In between tears, she even said God doesn't want us to waste their lives...

If my Roxy wants to stop wasting the animals lives, then I will become a full time vegetarian. No problemo. In a heartbeat.

I explain: what we can do to make a difference is to stop buying meat at the grocery store. The less meat that people buy at the grocery store, the fewer animals the farmers will have to kill/waste their lives (her term).

She thought about that for a few seconds, then started crying again. :(

"But I love ham soooo much!"

My poor baby is torn. Such a moral dilemma! This is heavy stuff for a 6 year old.

But, I'm so happy this conversation took place on a Meatless Monday!!

...

Do you remember realizing you were eating food with a face as a child?

<3, Tabi :D

p.s. You should have seen the look on her face when I told her that bacon was also meat. Poor kid...

...

Post Edit: Tonight (Tuesday night) over dinner, as she was picking through her beef, she decided with conviction we will no longer eat meat. She said, "I just don't want to feel this way anymore (bad)." And I could tell after she made the decision, she was very proud of it and felt much better. 

So that's that! We are Vegans. Oh boy. I will need a new cookbook.

How long do you think this will last?