Hey, you can do the vegetarian thing and be a great Jewish mother…my friend Dr. Jenn Berman, while not Orthodox, is a proud Jewish mama who is raising her kids vegetarian until they are of an age where they can start feeding themselves and making their own food choices. (http://www.doctorjenn.com) And also, you don’t need to sacrifice the delicious chicken and beef when there are so many great options for animals raised on family farms under sustainable, humane and, yes, even kosher conditions. I learned a lot about this while at Warren Wilson College, which is really a hippie kibbutz on a farm with a big organic garden…they raised the livestock free-range, fed organic diets. Yes, they get slaughtered at the end, but it can be done in a less traumatic way (check out books by Temple Grandin, an autistic activist who also devised more humane techniques for slaughterhouses.)
For example, we had our Thanksgiving with cage-free chickens and turkeys raised the old fashioned way, with a henhouse for hanging out and laying eggs and a yard to cluck around in. Believe it or not, we bought it at the Amish Market, right from the farmers who raised the animals.
Anyway, we can have phone chats about all of this when you get home.
Also: http://www.nofamass.org/programs/ofg/farmlist.php
xoxo
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