don't play with your food!

FINALLY we get to the fun stuff in school! (Spoiler alert: for my vegetarian & vegan friends an animal is hurt in the making of this story). So last night in culinary school I finally had the opportunity to do some serious butchering. As I was going to town and removing the entire lower extremities of a suckling pig, it reminded me of the one time I had a pet lamb. Totally true story! I’m being serious; when I was a kid for about one day I had a pet lamb. Well at least I thought it was intended to be my pet. I used to sing to it and everything… “Lily had a little lamb, little lamb, little lamb…”

My parents didn’t really tell me the reason why we were harboring a small wooly creature in our backyard, but if you’re familiar with the Mexican culture you know it’s quite common to allow your livestock to live in the backyard. And if you’re wondering whether or not I grew up on a farm, the answer is NO. I grew up in a regular residential neighborhood on the east side of Salinas, where most people kept large quantities of questionable objects in the backyard. To give you an idea, most of our neighbors either kept chickens, roosters, broken down cars, undocumented family members, large dogs, or grew massive amounts of corn.

So as I was saying; one Saturday morning my Dad took us out for a drive into the country (which seems funny to me now - because Salinas really still is “the country” now that I know what living in a city is like). As we drove through South County, we ended up on a ranch somewhere near King City. The ranch had big cardboard signs on the side of the road that said things like “Fresh Chicken Eggs”, “Dogs for Sale”, “Sheep's Milk”, “Suckling Pig”. For the most part this was the type of place one would go to get a farm fresh animal. At that age I think I was still too young to know these weren’t the types of animals you could keep around the house like a lap dog.

Our family was getting ready for a celebration, and as tradition would have it when you have a big party you serve A LOT of food. Thinking back to the occasion I can’t really remember what exactly we were celebrating, but I remember all the commotion of people coming in and out of our house before the festivities. I mean they could very well have been coming over just to check out my new pet lamb, but I’m sure they weren’t there to admire its shiny wool. They were probably just measuring up how many people would feast off the poor creature. That afternoon, once we managed to throw it in the back of my dad’s pick-up truck to get it home, I spent the entire day admiring my new friend. His quiet nature, lazy demeanor, and odd shaped excrement… Who poops like that anyway? I mean really, pooping in round little chocolate looking balls just isn’t right. Anyone could mistake it for something else and oops… there we go to the hospital because your little sister thought it was candy. Okay that never really happened, but it could have!

The next morning I woke up excited to start the day with my little lamb, but low and behold he escaped! I was frantic. I kept thinking maybe he ran into the middle of the street and got run over by a car. Who’s going to explain that one to the cops? Just picture the news story “wild lamb runs onto highway – causes 40 car pile up”. My parents told me not to worry, he wasn’t roaming the streets but it was likely that I wouldn’t see him again. I was pretty heart broken. Here I am thinking that on Monday I would get the chance of a lifetime, to brag in school about how cool my parents are for buying me a pet lamb. When you’re about 8 years old, it’s the highlight of your existence.

Between that morning and the remainder of the day, it’s all pretty much a blur now. I think I spent the day running through the neighborhood, riding bikes, playing in trees, pretty typical kid stuff. As it grew darker, my dad whistled for us to come inside the house. We lived on a pretty small block, so he could normally just whistle loudly and we’d hear him. My parents had a bunch of company over, so dinner was a little more relaxed and since it was summer we usually ate outside under the back patio. I was just about to wash my hands in the garage sink, when my dad made an attempt to stop me from going into the garage. Not paying much attention, I walked in and found a massive pile of lamb’s wool spread across the garage floor. One can’t even begin to explain the degree of confusion in a kid’s head, when they realize their pet lamb is now going to be dinner. How I didn’t vow to become vegan that very same day baffles my mind.

My dad finally owned up to the case of the missing lamb and offered to take me to McDonalds if it would make me feel better. I think at that point I had clearly lost my appetite and was in no mood for a hamburger. After my mild mental breakdown, it was time to call it a day and my mom tucked me into bed in hopes that I wouldn’t continue to accost her with accusations of murder. Bless her heart, she tried as best as she could but there was no way possible her little girl was going to let her off the hook for butchering her bestest friend ever. In the days following the incident; I don’t think I touched a single taquito for weeks, in fear that the meat leftovers were probably made from lamb.

Looking back in retrospect; it’s probably safe to say now that sometimes you’re better off not knowing where some of your food comes from.