I start this morning having no idea what the day will hold. I am a city girl.

I do not eat meat off the bone. Never buy pork chops. I buy boneless everything… When the turkey dinner is finished.. E goes to the kitchen and cleans the carcass and tosses it before I have to see it… I don’t like to think about where the meat came from. I removed the pages in my copy of  The Joy of Cooking on how to skin a rabbit..  I removed all the pages that showed animals as whole.. where they pictured what/where is the shank or the loin cut… ripped them all out and burned them.

In my world.. the meat on the table comes from a magical place where no one had to die. I name rabbits and deer, I don’t skin them… I can’t kill anything and I don’t want to be responsible for anyone’s death. We don’t fish because neither of us wants to hit a live animal with a stick. I am a huge hypocrite though because I continue to eat meat… not often but when I do it is mostly deboned chicken and pork tenderloin.

The reason I don’t like eating fish is because of all the bones.. I remember going to a top Chinese restaurant in Vancouver with a group of friends in my twenties.. The restaurant allowed you to choose the fish from the tank which was going to be prepared for the meal.. I took one look at the fish in the tank.. another of the food on the nearby tables and I ran out of the restaurant.. and woofed my cookies.. took a cab home alone and avoided driving down south cambie for 15 years…

But I love lamb.. My favorite recipe for lamb is to order it from Taverna Gargona in L. My girlfriend likes to order a lamb chop when we go there… not me.. Lamb is expensive to buy in Vancouver, so I didn’t buy it at the grocery store. It was often my choice if we went  out for dinner.. but again, served boneless.. In a restaurant once, I asked a chef to debone a rack of lamb before it was served to me.

We have ordered one half a lamb from the island farm and today is the day… I cannot think about what is going on up there at the farm right now… It makes me sick. I lay in bed Saturday night unable to sleep.. My neighbour says I have to remember what a great (if short) life they have had..

I don’t know what to expect. I cannot picture what the meat will look like when we pick it up and what I will have to do with it… But I am game (pun intended)…I have my recipe books out and I am trying to focus on the meals ahead.

Tomorrows post will tell you how

we make out….