I also know several people with vegan kids who have had to deal with "Your kid told my kid where meat comes from, and now my kid won't eat dinner!" phone calls from the parents of kindergarten and first grade classmates.

Heh.

He's also getting kind of obsessive about people and dying. Not sure where all this is coming from or how to handle it.

Ellie went through a phase like this a few months ago. She's 4.5. I have no dea what started it but both my mom (a teacher) and her teacher told me that it's age appropriate. She still will ask me out of the blue about where she will lve when I die, if we can get a cat when our dogs die, and so on.

Watching 4 Man Bobsled.

Some of those dudes should not be wearing skin suits. And since they're outside their sled running for about two seconds, I'm not entirely sure why they are.

My mother credits her preference for chicken to the fact she had to collect eggs from some really obnoxious hens. They used to attack her. She was happy to see them turned into dinner.

Yeah, Mom has always been GLEEFUL about eating lamb. She really, really, really hates sheep. Too many early mornings in sub-zero weather having to bottle feed the things, I think.

Emeril has a show on the Green Channel where he helps people who are having various sorts of food problem. One episode was a family where the parents were not vegetarian, but the two oldest kids had both, around age five, announced that they would not eat dead animals anymore, and so the parents talked to their pediatrician about nutrition and let them be vegetarian. They had a third kid, about age three when the show was filmed, who they just never bothered feeding meat to -- when you're already making a meat meal for the adults and a vegetarian meal for the kids, you're not going to also make chicken nuggets for the toddler. The mother went on Emeril's show for advice on how to get out of serving them grilled cheese every day for lunch. He showed her how to make some kid-friendly vegetarian soup and pasta dishes that had actual vegetables in them.

Bobsled is the one sport where those suits look really bad. It's funny how what makes an Olympic athlete varies so much by sport.

Kind of related: [link]

Crafty Ann Duran, 55, took pity on hens left featherless after being rescued from a battery farm.

And she came up with eggs-actly the right answer to keep them warm - hand-knitted tanktops.

Chickens lose their feathers after being cooped up in hot sheds at battery farms.

Davis and White's exhibition music: the hell?

Usually we'd sell all our bull (male) calves shortly after they were born, but occasionally we'd let one grow to near-maturity, and then have it slaughtered. Then we'd have a big freezer full of steak and hamburger.

I read an article about a farm family where they would name the animals after food items to remind the kids what would happen. It's hard to get attached to a pig named Bacon.

I'm glad it sounds like a typical developmental stage. We're pretty open about explaining things as truthfully as we can. The steer we bought last year was named Rupert so we tend to rave about how delicious he is when we cook steaks.

Owen remains a little sensitive about the thought of people dying, which I try to work through with him. I want to think that we'll always be there for him but I just explain that we won't die for a loooooong time.

I just have to watch about using idioms like "you're killing me" or "I'm dying over here."