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I consider myself a bit of a couch vegetarian (ou végéterian de salle) because I try not to eat meat with every meal. Also, I have a bit of an ethical problem about where it comes from, if you know what I mean. I tried being a vegeratrian for a while during the early 90’s, but my poor mom found it a very difficult switch, and after about two weeks I was pretty hungry and tired of eating quiche. I haven’t ever tried again for a lot of reasons. I don’t know enough about vegetarian diets to ensure that I get enough essential amino acids and vitamins from meat replacements, and frankly, I do enjoy the taste of meat. But I have tried to be very careful about not consuming too much meat in the past few years. One of our roomates in Edmonton was on a reduced-red meat diet and this helped me to learn about alternatives to red meat and to start cooking more fish. I think there a lot of arguments for reduced meat consumption and here they are …

• First, in our overconsumptive culture, we are probably eating much more meat than is necessary. In many (but not all) traditional cultures, meat tended to be scarce and except during hunting times, no meat or small portions were consumed. The average person can probably reduce our meat consumption by half and still obtain the necessary amino acids & vitamins. Certain kinds of meat, particularly ground beef, contain a lot of fat and this causes obvious health problems such as obesity and cardiovascular disease.
• Second, the high density production of livestock has led to a number of health and environmental problems. Manure runoff from feedlots contaminates local drinking water. Animals kept under such close conditions can easily spread diseases and bacteria harmful to humans which may not make the animals sick but can cause serious disease for the end-consumer. Hamburger disease (E. coli O157:H7), mad cow disease/BSE, Salmonella & Listeria are perfect examples of this. For both disease prevention and increased muscle growth, antibiotics are heavily used in the livestock industry, and this is contributing to antibiotic resistance in human and animal pathogens. Again, by reducing meat consumption, we could decrease the need for high-density livestock farming and prevent some of the problems described above.
• Third, there is a good correlation between frequent consumption of red meat and cancer. Apparently this is new data out of a long-term very large scale study presented at one of the conferences I attended recently (I was in another presentation but one of the physicians I know described the presentation to me after).

So…I think there are some very good reasons for reducing or controlling one’s meat consumption. One does not have to be a strict vegetarian to make a difference in both health and the conditions animals are raised in.

Ironically, I had shepherd’s pie for supper tonight, but I have to say it was the first ground beef I have probably had in 2 months…

I have been trying to create a website over the past few days, with relatively little success. Dan bought me a domain name and server space as a welcome-home present. I’ve never had my own domain name before, so this is really cool. However…we are trying to use drupal to manage the site content. This is a very cool and powerful site administration and content management system, but it seems a little too over my head. So far, I can’t get the image gallery, the blog or the delicious links to work properly, which are really the three things I want from a website. So I am getting a bit frustrated here…well, if I ever do get this to work, you will see a link here….

Well before I get into the process of posting a blog about our amazing vacation, I should say a few words about how I almost did not get home!

I arrived in Montreal Sept 10th at 1 PM as planned, but far from the trip I expected. I was scheduled to fly out of Rome Ciampiano airport to Paris Beauvais airport at 7:15 on Sept 9th, stay in a hotel in Paris, then catch a flight to Montreal at 11:30 AM on the 10th.

Unfortunately, there was a very heavy rainstorm just as I was supposed to be boarding my flight. I have never seen such rain in my life. There were just buckets and buckets of it. There were shuttle busses parked alongside the terminal about 5 feet away and we could not see them because of the rain. I was standing in line with the other people ready to board our flight when it was cancelled. All the inbound flights were re-routed to other airports and people going to Paris, London, Edinbourough, Frankfurt, Basel and Geneva were all cancelled as we were. Eventually we found out that we could get tickets on flights tomorrow morning and/or evening, so we all headed out back to the ticket counter. I just about slipped on a very large puddle of water that had dripped from the ceiling on the way there, but fortunately a guy beside me stopped me from falling. We were the first flight to be cancelled, so we got to negotiate our new flights first.

We had to collect our checked luggage first, and then they re-booked us on the 6:35 AM or 6:35 PM flight in preference of how early we had checked in for the cancelled flight (very fortunately I checked in early and was the 13th of about 130 people). There was complete chaos in the information counter as everyone tried to get a ticket and they spoke almost excluseively in Italian. Lots of pushing and shoving and one lady got really angry and they called the police to the airport to keep us under control (the scary army guys with machine guns came too…). Somehow I got a flight on the 6:35 AM to Paris (I don’t know exactly how as I never spoke to anyone, but suddenly I had a new ticket). This was extremely good news because I had my flight to Montreal from Charles de Gaulle that morning and the evening flight would mean I would have to book another flight home.

I stayed up all night in the airport with a group of three lovely Canadian ladies who were going to Toronto tomorrow afternoon from Charles de Gaulle as well. We had to buy water from the cafe, as there was no fountain available. For supper we had chips and popcorn since the restaurant closed. Eventually they kicked us out of the eating area for the restaurant while they cleaned it, and at that point they actually gave out bottles of water. We got in line to re-check in for our flight at about 4 AM but then the conveyer belt would not work and they started to ask people with hand luggage only and a whole bunch of people started to make a second line. Then the conveyer belt started to work again but the original line was gone, so it was everyone for themselves. I tried to check in and they guy at the counter told me I had to wait for the people that originally had booked the 6:35 AM flight to check in first and then he would do the people who were re-scheduled, but this was absoluely not true because he booked a whole bunch of people who were cancelled right after he told me this. All the time I had been telling people that it was imperative that I catch the morning flight because I had an international connecting flight this morning and they did not care about this at all. Anyway, eventually I checked in again and when I went to the boarding line the Canadian ladies were right at the front of the line and saved me a place. The computer terminals were not working but they just let us board anyway. The flight was scheduled to arrive at about 8:45 AM in Paris, but in Beauvais airport and we had to get to CDG.

By this point I was very lucky to have a flight at all (some of the people we met were bumped to Monday or Tuesday next week) but it was far from clear as to whether I would have enough time to catch my flight to Montreal since the two ariports are quite far apart and Beauvais has no airport to airport connections. I knew I would have to catch a taxi and that it would be very expensive. It all depended on how long it would take (or if at all) we would get our luggage at Beauvais and how long the taxi ride would take. We landed on time and fortunately our luggage came out right away (one of the advantages to a teeny-tiny airport I guess). I was extremely lucky in that there was a mini-van taxi that just happened to be waiting outside the airport (its is really in the middle of nowhere so who knows how long it would have taken to call one) so myself and the 3 Canadian ladies talked to the driver. The good news was yes he could take us to CDG, but we did not have enough cash between us. Again, I was extremely lucky in that there was a bank machine in the little terminal, so I ran in, took out 100 Euro, and ran back out. We were on our way. It took about 45-50 minutes which meant that I arrived at CDG Terminal 3 at about 10:20 AM (the check-in supposedly closed at 10:45). The ride cost 120 Euro, but worth every penny! I checked into the Paris to Montreal flight without any problems and arrived. I was a very, very fortunate person!