This led me to think, the beef that I buy at the market to feed me, my hubby, and my two beautiful kids (an old english sheepdog and the most beautiful original breed we call Maupa) is it safe? One might say don’t eat beef, which is pretty easy for me to accomplish, but I don’t think my BBQ loving husband and kids would appreciate the move. I also have read that organic, grass fed beef is safe, but on my salary I can’t afford to shop exclusively at Whole Foods Market.

According to an article called USDA Misleading American Public about Beef Safety on Organic consumer’s Association site, even if the most dangerous parts are removed, because of the way we slaughter cows there is no guarantee that the dangerous parts of the cow won’t get in contact with the more “safe” parts. Also, I am very concerned about the rate of testing USDA conducts on downed cows – only 2% in comparison to 100% of testing in Europe and Japan.

Reuters in one of the article reported,

“The major U.S. safeguards against mad cow disease are the feed ban, a prohibition against slaughtering most “downer” cattle — animals too sick to walk on their own — for human food, and a requirement for meatpackers to remove from carcasses the brains, spinal cords and other parts most likely to contain the malformed proteins blamed for the disease.”

I am not sure where this reporter has been in the past few months because we all know that after seeing the HSUS video, downer cows were systematically abused and tortured then slaughtered and placed into the food chain, which caused a massive recall.

I guess I won’t be eating or feeding my family beef anymore, until i get a big fat raise so I can go shop at Whole Foods.

I have been living in the Santa Monica area since 1999, one would guess that I might have been to this market at least once, but I haven’t. Not till today. It’s not because I never had a free Wednesday morning, but it’s more of not remembering that there is farmer’s market on wednesdays, so close to my house. (I thought farmer’s markets only opens on Sundays). This morning, I was ready to participate in the Santa Monica tradition.

In the past, I have been to Beverly Hills farmer’s market, where I tried my first Kettle Corn and fell in love with it, and indulged in crepes and other awsome breakfast items. I drove down to 2nd and Arizona on an empty stomach with high anticipation of beautiful breakfast that would soon fill my belly. When I got there I saw lots of people and numerous parasols that filled the street and was very excited to be part of it. My excitement soon turned into disappointment, when I found out that there were no breakfast food being served there. 90% of all stands there were fresh produce. I had to fill my stomach from one stand where they sold premade food – Rockenwager bakery‘s Blueberry Scone. It was yummy, but after such high expectation I was still hungry.

After I partially filled my stomach with the scone, I looked around the market looking for produce that would inspire me to cook. I bought Dill, Cilantro, Arugula, Cage Free Eggs, Chinese Broccoli, Tomato, and the sweetest Strawberries. All of the produce were so fresh and looked very tasty.

If I can remember to go, I would definitely go back and buy my veggies and fruit at this market. But next time, I am having my breakfast before heading over there.

The first exhibit we saw was the special exhibit in the Art of the Americas Building called “Phantom Sightings: art after the Chicano movement.” I really did not like it. I didn’t feel that the art in that exhibit was a good representation of contemporary art by people of Latin descent. If this is the best collection of this generation’s contemporary Latin artists, and I believe there are a lot of other artists out there that are better, then I feel that I didn’t miss much by not visiting LACMA in 10 years.

Most of the pieces looked like they were just put together in a matter of minutes and lacked any originality or creativity. There were couple of interesting pieces there but as a whole, I felt the collection was a waste of my beautiful afternoon.

Then we moved on to the “Doctrinal Nourishment:Art and Anarchism in the Time of James Ensor” exhibit, which was fantastic. The technique these artists possessed to produce such prints were amazing. Most of the pieces were black and white etchings and some of the pieces were in color by adding watercolor and chalk. To create such pieces one must have had to plan everything and paid attention to the most minuscule detail. It was a great experience to see these pieces in person.

If you can make a trip to LACMA, you should head over there before July 6, 2008, when Ensor exhibit comes to an end.

Later in the evening I read two articles on the internet about the following art exhibits. One was an article on BBC news about seven German artists living with lice in a museum for three weeks in the name of Art, and the other was about an ‘artist’ Guillermo Vargas Habacuc, who took a dog from the street, tied him to a rope in an art gallery and began starving him to death in the name of art. Are artists so out of creative ideas they need help from lice and need to kill an innocent animal? If so, then shouldn’t they get a real job?

Is this really art? If it is I am not so embarrassed for not being part of it for the last 10 years.