Tastes (Kinda) Like Chicken, Looks Like The Lower 48?

Call me old-fashioned, but I like my food to look like food.  Sure, it's a well-known fact that I enjoy the little cheese crackers with the peanut butter in them, and that color does not occur in nature except to scream 'poisonous!', but they do look exactly like they're designed to.

On the opposite side of the coin, what's the deal with chicken nuggets?  First it was McDonalds, and now it seems everyone is jumping on the 'that's-not-shaped-like-food' bandwagon.  I don't eat McNuggets, but on occasion, nuggets from other fast food icons make a quick and tidy snack when I'm on the run, and they're all shaped the same. Some of them look like Minnesota.  Some of them are shaped like animators used to draw pork chops back in the 1940's.  Some of them are shaped like paramecia.  Some of them have no rhyme or reason whatsoever, and they're only benefit is the ability to fit neatly into a vat of barbecue or sweet-and-sour.

I get the dinosaurs, the stars and the other amusing kid-friendly shapes, because we want our kids to eat something besides paste and scabs.  But unless you come out with the full fifty state nugget pack to teach them geography, it seems wrong to pick on one or two.  And 50 nuggets would just add to the growing childhood obesity issues in this country, especially dipped in honey mustard.

Round is good.  Shape them like drumsticks, I'll be happy.  It's an extrusion, you can't tell me these are the only shapes we can come up with.

Does that look like a McNugget/New Hampshire to you?

I mentioned my curiousity about this to someone the other day, and they sent me to this article about genetically engineered ground meat.  That's right, scientists are developing cell structures that will grow a hamburger without ever needing to be farm-raised, slaughtered or butchered, and it won't create the mass amounts of greenhouse gas expelled by real cows and chickens. 

This makes perfect sense to me, that half of the meat we consume is already ground, so why not remove the animal cruelty from the picture?  I love the American farm and the American farmer, but I've read much on the environmental impact a single cow can have on global warming, and how each cow produces 1/16th the meat-to-pollution ratio of smaller animals like chickens.  And now, everyone could grow their own meat.  I'm on board.

The only tragedy here?  Every day I don't finish my old novel is a day that my imaginary happenings become closer to truth.

Damn.  I wish I had some of those cheesy peanut butter crackers.

When the legend becomes truth, print the legend

Some of you have discerned, or outright read, that I am an erstwhile novelist. Given my drive for follow-through, I started the concept of my first novel back in college, and I have about 100 pages of what once was genius, and has since degraded in my mind into insane drivel. The one constant, and one that seems to get me some odd looks from time to time, is the 'microcows' tag on all of my various web identities (just look up! There it is!).

In 1996, I attempted to dramatize the idea that standard cattle are a burden on the planet. However, I would never suggest we stop raising beef or dairy cattle, because steak, butter and cheese are some of the finest gifts we've received from the food gods. Instead, I figured if we could raise smaller animals, spaniel-sized cows, and each family would get just the amount of milk they could consume in a day. In the third-world absence of refrigeration, a cow could feed a village for a day, but nothing would go to waste.

Of course, in 1996, the Information Superhighway was Google-free, and was really just an Information Two-Lane Paved Road, with a few strip clubs and Ask Jeeves bordering the gravel shoulders. Now, in the knowledge overload of 2009 Internetitude, I can look up anything and find 200 relevant videos on YouTube, including the Jack-in-the-Box commercial I witnessed this morning:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ut0WDb-xzks&feature=player_embedded

Of course, after this added a little joy to my morning - sorrow-laden, but joy all the same - I saw there was actual, documented proof that microcows really exist, they're not just a Castro-related myth:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=De3XjqPVa0g

Sorry I can't figure out how to embed the videos here for your enjoyment, but please follow the links, at least the first one. I'm just going to go be sad that I missed my opportunity to be cutting-edge while I'm mowing my lawn.