Whole in Their Heads
In one of the more ridiculous chunks of political animal-rights correctness I’ve heard lately, if not ever, the giant organic grocery store chain Whole Foods has decided to stop selling live lobsters, claiming that the things are treated “inhumanely” in shipping. Yeesh. Has the Crustacean Liberation Front scored another triumph? Who knew they were so all-powerful??
People, they’re LOBSTERS. Basically, sea-going insects. They're pretty much cannibals (dining on lobster is not a treat reserved only for humans) and they have no more nervous system than other bugs. They're not like cows or pigs.
And, uh, like, they’re FOOD ANIMALS! We boil them alive and we EAT THEM!
I am really, REALLY, uh, steamed about this. We have a huge Whole Foods store on 14th Street at Union Square, where it has been my habit to shop once a week, to significant food-budget expense, and once a month or so, I would allow myself the treat of a nice steamed two-pound lobster, which I generally would then make into homemade lobster rolls, perhaps my favorite dish EVER.
Oh, sure, I can still go somewhere else and BUY a damn lobster, but then I would have to cook it myself, and the whole point of the exercise was so that I wouldn’t HAVE to cook it myself. Whole Foods did it for me. And I was so very grateful.
I would go to the fish department, tell the guy I wanted a two-pounder, and then prance off to do the rest of my shopping. When I returned, the lobster would be all cooked and in a nice little bag for me to take home. It was lovely, and the lobster, being so fresh and all, was dee-lishus. Almost like sitting on the benches of the picnic tables of the Ogunquit Lobster Pound in Ogunquit, Maine, and stuffing my face with steamed buttered lobster and/or lobster rolls. Almost, I say.
Anyway, since Whole Foods doesn't have all that much else to which I am devoted beyond a point of honor (their Packham pears, my faves, often remain unripe for WEEKS, they have a pathetically small selection of powdered hot chocolate mixes and other cacao products, their meatballs made me sick, they have never yet had those cool plastic clogs called Crocs in my size and a color that doesn't look like baby poo---WF, take note), and the stuff I do like (big bags of giant cooked frozen shrimp, fish sticks) I can get cheaper and better at Trader Joe’s, I’ll be boycotting WF with small regret, and shopping even more enthusiastically at TJ’s. I shall miss those neat little two-bite cupcakes, of course, but they’re not healthy anyway, so there it is.
Whole Foods claims if it can find a “more humane” shipper (to quote MDF Michael Rosenthal, perhaps they'll supply the traveling doomed crustaceans with upholstered observation train cars and glasses of beer on their last ride, since apparently if you souse lobster in beer not only does it taste better but it will have had a very pleasant death), lobster will be back on the menu, but in the meantime I say, Whole Foods, let you eat cake.
Oh, and if you haven’t discovered this yet, Barnes & Noble carries Godiva chocolate raspberry bars: dark chocolate slabs filled with raspberry jam. Pricey ($2.75 here in NYC), but positively ambrosial.
People, they’re LOBSTERS. Basically, sea-going insects. They're pretty much cannibals (dining on lobster is not a treat reserved only for humans) and they have no more nervous system than other bugs. They're not like cows or pigs.
And, uh, like, they’re FOOD ANIMALS! We boil them alive and we EAT THEM!
I am really, REALLY, uh, steamed about this. We have a huge Whole Foods store on 14th Street at Union Square, where it has been my habit to shop once a week, to significant food-budget expense, and once a month or so, I would allow myself the treat of a nice steamed two-pound lobster, which I generally would then make into homemade lobster rolls, perhaps my favorite dish EVER.
Oh, sure, I can still go somewhere else and BUY a damn lobster, but then I would have to cook it myself, and the whole point of the exercise was so that I wouldn’t HAVE to cook it myself. Whole Foods did it for me. And I was so very grateful.
I would go to the fish department, tell the guy I wanted a two-pounder, and then prance off to do the rest of my shopping. When I returned, the lobster would be all cooked and in a nice little bag for me to take home. It was lovely, and the lobster, being so fresh and all, was dee-lishus. Almost like sitting on the benches of the picnic tables of the Ogunquit Lobster Pound in Ogunquit, Maine, and stuffing my face with steamed buttered lobster and/or lobster rolls. Almost, I say.
Anyway, since Whole Foods doesn't have all that much else to which I am devoted beyond a point of honor (their Packham pears, my faves, often remain unripe for WEEKS, they have a pathetically small selection of powdered hot chocolate mixes and other cacao products, their meatballs made me sick, they have never yet had those cool plastic clogs called Crocs in my size and a color that doesn't look like baby poo---WF, take note), and the stuff I do like (big bags of giant cooked frozen shrimp, fish sticks) I can get cheaper and better at Trader Joe’s, I’ll be boycotting WF with small regret, and shopping even more enthusiastically at TJ’s. I shall miss those neat little two-bite cupcakes, of course, but they’re not healthy anyway, so there it is.
Whole Foods claims if it can find a “more humane” shipper (to quote MDF Michael Rosenthal, perhaps they'll supply the traveling doomed crustaceans with upholstered observation train cars and glasses of beer on their last ride, since apparently if you souse lobster in beer not only does it taste better but it will have had a very pleasant death), lobster will be back on the menu, but in the meantime I say, Whole Foods, let you eat cake.
Oh, and if you haven’t discovered this yet, Barnes & Noble carries Godiva chocolate raspberry bars: dark chocolate slabs filled with raspberry jam. Pricey ($2.75 here in NYC), but positively ambrosial.
posted by Patricia Kennealy Morrison | 10:33 AM
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