Should we become vegetarian?

hrmm... breaking news... USDA detects mad cow in AL.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,187705,00.html

Cant eat beef... mad cow...
Cant eat chicken, turkey, duck... bird flu...
Fish... mercury poisoning, etc.....
Pork... one of the most unhealthy meats there is...

Should we all just become vegetarian?

What about all the pesticides and stuff they put into vegetables?

We are poisoning our food supply.

Keep your laws off my meat!!!!

Well, if you like to entertain various opinions, you can have all the
arguments against worrying about food at


http://
www.consumerfreedom.com/

Here's their take on BF concerns in poultry products:

Catching Bird Flu Hysteria

If the recent news explosion about bird flu has taught us anything, it's
that food scares abhor a vacuum. Now that the British government has
declared the mad-cow scare has peaked and is in decline, the news media
-- and animal rights groups -- are substituting one animal-disease panic
for another. The predictable result can be found in a nationwide opinion
survey that the Center for Consumer Freedom recently commissioned.
Our polling data, released this morning, indicate that a whopping 47
percent of Americans believe the myth that they can contract bird flu by
eating chicken.

Last month the European Food Safety Authority did something that the
U.S. Food and Drug Administration has yet to do: It proclaimed that "there
is no evidence to suggest to date that avian influenza can be transmitted
to humans through consumption of food, notably poultry and eggs." Dr.
Hugh Pennington, president of the UK's renowned Society for General
Microbiology, made an even stronger statement to the BBC: "The virus is
transmitted by live birds. It's not in the poultry meat and it's certainly not
in eggs."

All right everyone. My dream has come true. Everyone's going to become a vegetarian! You need any advice, you just holler. I've been vegetarian for 27 years! -- Libby

Libby what are your best books on cooking grains and beans. So many of the vegetarian recipes are not suitable for food storage.

The "Tassajara cookbook" is good. THe camping section of "Recipes for a Small Planet" was good, but the rest of the recipes are pretty useless to me. Also the "Encyclopedia of Country Living" is good. I'm reading "Simple Food for the Good Life". "Total Health and Food Power" has a good bean roast outline.

My thermos barley came out good. I just poured 4 cups boiling water over a cup of barley and it cooked overnight in the thermos. I think I'll use 3 1/2 cups water next time.

The thick, brothy extra water was good for dissolving some powdered milk in though :-0 I don't really like lukewarm powdered milk though. It tastes better hot or cold. With enough sugar and some spices though...I might purposely use the 4 cups water. Or if I was able to chill the barley after adding the powder to serve as a rice pudding like dessert. I'd do that.