Bad-guy and chips?

I think it’s the neat shape of lamb chops that I like best. They’re also quick to cook and tasty, so I’m always keen for a treat at least once a month. I normally associate lamb chops with a heartening dinner, but today, Ezra’s comments made me think twice, and not in a way you’d expect.

So kids go through a phase of realising that the “meat” they eat, comes from a cow, a pig, a chicken, a lamb etc….the cute animals they have been reading about in children’s books and decide that it is so awful to eat them, that they won’t touch meat again. (Until they can be persuaded that the cow had died anyway, or they smell cooking bacon…)

We thought we’d got away with this one. Ezra has always been a keen carnivore, often eating nothing but the meat on his plate. Today, however, he revealed a miscommunication that may have happened a long time ago, making it seem to him that cannibalism is entirely acceptable, and mummy serves it up regularly at home “as a special treat”. Because today for lunch we are eating “Bad Guys”. 

“What?!” I asked him again.

“….those things you have just put on the plate in the oven, they’re from bad-guys.” 

“Well, no Ezra, they’re from lambs.”

“Oh,” he said, thoughtfully wandering off to ponder this latest revelation. He sat quietly at dinner, in front of the meat he’d eaten many times before, and would you believe it, didn’t touch it. He didn’t like it.

It seems, that ridding the world of “bad-guys” one chop at a time was all the motivation this 5 year old needed to finish his dinner…..and to be honest (despite the fact that cannibalism is ethically, morally and dangerously wrong) it does seem rather cruel to be eating something so beautiful as a lamb, when there are all those bad guys running about messing up the place……!