We’ve been trying to make some of our favorite meat dishes without meat. (So far we only have one for-sure source of certified-humane meat: Murray’s chicken.) Chili in particular has always pleased this carnivore. My mother made it with beef; I used to make it with ground turkey (until I learned how almost all turkeys are raised); and now I make it with tempeh.

I love tempeh. It has that rich, proteiny, “umami” taste that Western science has “discovered” is available to human taste receptors (sweet, salty, bitter, sour, and now umami). Umami is yummy.

Tempeh comes out of the package in a neat, dry slab and is strangely satisfying to dice. This recipe is hard to mess up and is amenable to substitutions, additions, and deletions.

Tempeh Chili

• 1 slab (8 oz.) of plain tempeh, diced
• 1 Tbsp. canola or olive oil
• 1 Tbsp. soy sauce
• 1 large onion, diced
• 3 carrots, diced
• 2-3 cloves of garlic, minced
• Packet of chili seasoning mix (or make your own with chili powder, cumin, oregano, and paprika)
• 2 zucchini and/or yellow squash, diced
• 2 cups diced bell pepper (it’s nice to use three colors)
• 1 can each: pinto, kidney, black beans
• Large can of crushed/diced tomatoes or spaghetti sauce
• Frozen corn (roasted corn is nice)
• Salt and pepper to taste

1. Saute the tempeh and garlic in soy sauce and oil over medium heat until browned. Add onion and saute till translucent.
2. Add seasoning mix and the remaining ingredients except corn. Turn up heat and bring to a boil, then cover and simmer for at least 45 minutes (the longer the better). If you want thicker chili, leave the pot uncovered. Stir occasionally.
3. Add corn toward the end so it doesn’t get too mushy (it’s okay to throw it in frozen). To gild the lily, you can top with grated cheddar cheese, chives, fresh cilantro and/or sour cream. It’s even better the next day, and also freezes well.

Here are other crazy things you can add to the mix: the half jar of salsa you have in the fridge, a shot of Tabasco, a bottle of good dark beer, a squirt of ketchup for extra tanginess, a dash of lemon juice, a tablespoon of brown sugar or maple syrup.

We have two cats, both 15-pounders. That’s a lot of cat food each day. They’re carnivores, of course, so we don’t have a choice about feeding them meat (cats don’t have the enzymatic pathways necessary to get nutrition from plants). But I don’t want to buy any food, for my cats or myself, made from badly-treated animals. So now what? Do we start making our own cat food?

I didn’t face this dilemma until today because, frankly, I thought it would be too hard to do the right thing. This morning, though, I decided to at least do the research, no commitments.

A search on “homemade cat food” turned up a daunting, step-by-step description (Raw Cat Food Diet Recipe Made With Real Bones) of how to procure and then grind organ meats, muscle, bone, gizzards and the like (theoretically great, because why not use all parts of an animal?). The biggest obstacle was the $185 meat grinder–quite an investment if this just wound up being a one-time experiment. But then–duh!–I realized that this grisly prescription was for a raw diet (which has some hardcore proponents and also makes perfect sense, given that the cats’ natural diet is raw).

Another quick search led me to a totally manageable recipe for cooked cat food: gentle combinations of protein, vegetables, and whole grains. Huge sigh of relief. Basically, it’s two cat food recipes that you rotate. Both add up to simply throwing a few ingredients in a blender. Recipe #1 is cooked ground chicken (the Murray’s brand from the co-op is Certified Humane), brown rice, and carrots. Recipe #2 is cooked beef[ref]Michael has found a local source for third-party certified beef; I’ll share all our sources once we compile a master list.[/ref], oats, eggs, and assorted vitamin supplements. You can make big batches and freeze them. I’m going to call the vet first to make sure they’re legit (she thinks I’m crazy anyway).

Marvin and Reuben patiently waiting for us to do the right thing

So that’s our plan moving forward. I take some comfort in knowing that the horrible food I’ve been buying has at least provided one of them, Marvin, with the energy to do something pretty amazing in the world.

Before we adopted him, I knew I wanted to do “pet therapy”–that is, I wanted to visit a nursing home with my cat for what is known in the animal-assisted therapy world as “meet and greets.” I searched and searched for an affectionate, gentle, unflappable cat that didn’t mind traveling in a cat carrier. After a rigorous “Pet Partner” certification process, Marvin and I began our visits, which consist of him laying on a towel on residents’ beds or laps, providing an armful or lapful of love. Every muscle in his body is relaxed as he brings comfort, surprise, and delight with his purrs. Even residents who are agitated or unhappy when we arrive often shift gears when they start to pet Marvin. It’s that whole human-animal bond, a shortcut to their hearts.

Sometimes I hand the residents a brush so they can groom him (it must be nice, when one is constantly being cared for, to be asked to groom an appreciative cat). Sometimes the residents don’t talk with me, but only with Marvin, telling him how handsome he is, or, frequently, how they once had a cat like him. At those times it’s an honor to step back and let him do his work.

Marvin and I will continue our visits no matter what he eats. In fact, we had a great visit just yesterday after I fed him his Science Diet canned food. But today is a new day, so I’ll soon be making the cat equivalent of homemade baby food.

Update 3/19/10: The first batch (the chicken recipe) was easy to make and a big hit! I used boneless chicken thighs, which are much less expensive than breasts. The result looks like chicken salad pudding.

Update 4/10/10: Our cat’s veterinarian, Julie Morris, was very supportive of my DIY approach. At her suggestion I bought Dr. Pitcairn’s Complete Guide to Natural Health for Dogs & Cats. Evidently, Pitcairn is the go-to guy for homemade cat food. All of his recipes include “Healthy Powder”–a mix of bonemeal, kelp powder, vitamin C, nutritional yeast, and lecithin, all of which are available at our co-op. I’ve since made three recipes: Beefy Oats, Poultry Delight, and Feline Feast. The cats love them all. Recently Michael confessed to having tried Beefy Oats. He said it was like dry meatloaf–not exactly tasty, but fine in a pitch.

I recently described witnessing the summer ritual lobster slaughter in my dad’s restaurant. Another difficult aspect of restaurant life was dealing with customers. Noting my struggle, my dad explained that cranky customers were to be expected. Serving people their food is personal, he’d say, and people need things to be a certain way because food, and eating it with one’s family, is fundamental. “People get touchy,” he said.

And it’s true–what’s more personal, more intimate, than what we put in our mouths? And, these days, what’s more easily maddening? My friend Brook recently commented:

“Really, a day is not complete without my having experienced something close to complete outrage about food, in some way or another. Something so seemingly simple.”

It’s both seemingly simple and completely basic to being human. We have to put food in our mouths every day. It fuels everything we do. Our mouths are built to get pleasure from it, our digestive systems are built to draw nourishment from it. Pleasure, payoff. (Evolution got this right, of course. Same with sex, though I guess in that case the payoff is regeneration of the species. But I digress.)

I used to teach in a K-8 school, and I remember thinking that as a job, teaching was broad-reaching and relevant; the classroom was a microcosm of society. Education was about brain science, psychology, race, gender, socioeconomics, group process. On a school level, it was about politics, economics, even city planning.

Food is everything, too. It’s family and social culture, public statement and private comfort, economics and politics, botany and biology, industry and folk wisdom, and, as we now know, not just pleasure but pain.

Back in the ’60s, the UK government commissioned an investigation into the welfare of “intensively farmed animals.” They then set up the Farm Animal Welfare Council, which developed a set of guidelines now known as the Five Freedoms:

• Freedom from thirst and hunger: by ready access to fresh water and a diet to maintain full health and vigor.
• Freedom from discomfort: by providing an appropriate environment including shelter and a comfortable resting area.
• Freedom from pain, injury, and disease: by prevention or rapid diagnosis and treatment.
• Freedom to express normal behavior: by providing sufficient space, proper facilities and company of the animal’s own kind.
• Freedom from fear and distress: by ensuring conditions and treatment which avoid mental suffering.

It all seems so simple and reasonable, right? The Five Freedoms describe the world that all animals (and all humans, for that matter) should live in–and you can even count them on one hand. If Old MacDonald really did have a farm once, surely that’s how he would have organized things. And yet, for 98% of the animals we eat, freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.

So right now my goal is, at the very least, to leverage another precious and fragile freedom, the freedom of information, to educate myself and my fellow co-op members about what’s happening on some farms that Old MacDonald would never recognize.