Turkey revisited

Even though I haven't seen anything resembling a turkey since I've come to China (well, okay, chickens do resemble turkeys, so I take that back), I've recently fallen in love with 火鸡 - their name in Chinese. Say it with me: "huo ji." Literally translated, it means "fire chicken", so I've now got all sorts of pictures in my mind of turkeys running around with fire helmets and capes on, or jumping motorcycles through flaming hoops a la Evel Knievel.

Also been thinking a lot about vegetarianism a lot, especially since Jane's been discussing it in her three environmentalism classes that she's been teaching. So I thought that this post was worth sharing - about a guy in the Los Angeles area who raises and (very infrequently) slaughters his own poultry. The authors warn that the content is "not for everyone", but, no, I think it is for everyone. Something to get a good post-Thanksgiving discussion started, anyway... I've got more thoughts on the issue, but will leave it at that for now.

A last note - Homegrown Evolution is a great site on urban homesteading, gardening, and simpler living in general. Check it out!

Slaughtering Turkeys for Thanksgiving
Homegrown Evolution homepage

Oh, yeah, Happy Thanksgiving!

As I'm wrapping up on lesson planning this last Thursday morning of November before heading to teach four hours of classes this afternoon, I'm reminded that back where I came from, it's a holiday of some kind or another. Oh, yeah, Thanksgiving!

As you may have gleaned from a post or two back there somewhere, we had our (turkey-less) turkey day a couple of weekends ago, hosting 27 people from our organization at our campus for an early American and late Canadian Thanksgiving. We had a couple of awesome breakfasts featuring pancakes and homemade granola, a load of interesting books and magazines hauled over from the States by our fearless leader, a game or five of Chinese chess, a field trip into Chengdu, and, most importantly, some great fellowship with our fellow teachers and friends. I can tell how busy we were before and how much fun we had during by the relative lack of photos that we have of the event. Below, a small sampling:


Shelly and Jane, showing their amazement at real (okay, artificial, but still...) maple syrup.


Bob the coffee warrior, going at the beans with a rolling pin because our newly acquired hand-powered second hand coffee grinder turned out to be a bit of a let-down.


Ysa hitting it off with Emily, who, along with Bob, is one of the new teachers that's joined our group this year.


Some distinguished folks in our apartment at breakfast time.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!