Carrie Underwood and Leslie Both Had ‘Trouble’ With Beef

I am a member of Sam's Club. Quenton and I are addicted to the enormous packages of toilet paper and paper towels. Don't laugh, I know you are too! (LOL) Another thing I really like is the every other month magazine they send to their members called, 'Healthy Living Made Simple.' On the cover this month, Carrie Underwood. Inside, Carrie revealed her reason for not eating beef and I immediately thought of a story from my childhood.

It all starts with her family and growing up in Oklahoma. At 13-years-old, she decided to stop eating beef because she felt like the cows were pets. I had a similar experience but it wasn't ME who had a problem - it was my dad, Captain Morgan.

On our little farm, we had a horse, pony, a goose and several stray dogs and cats. One evening, my dad came home for work, washed his hands, and sat down at our nightly meat and potatoes dinner. He informed the family that he was going to get a calf that we would raise for meat. My brother (6) and I (10) were told WE would have to take care of feeding it, watering it and cleaning its stall. The captain also went on to lecture us about how, 'This is NOT a pet! You can't name it or pet it." At the time, I thought I would have trouble NOT becoming attached to the calf. I loved ALL my animals. But it turned out it was no trouble at all.

The calf arrived in a trailer. He had made up his mind that he wasn't going to come out. He wanted nothing to do with my father's plan. So, after about an hour, the men finally got the calf out of the beat up trailer and into the stall in the barn. My brother and I tried for over a week to take care of the calf, but the calf was mean. It would charge us and try to knock us over - we were scared of it. My dad soon heard enough of our complaints and took over the responsibility of the calf. While my brother and I focused on the other animals, my dad tried to tame the wild calf. He even tried to befriend it by naming it - Trouble.

One night at the dinner table, after Trouble had grown big and strong and been taken off to the butcher, we gathered around the table and took our seats for our nightly meat and potatoes dinner - we said grace and started digging in. My dad commented on how delicious the the steak was and my brother spoke up....."Guess what steak this is, Daddy!!" Captain Morgan looked up at my brother, continued to chew, even took another "bite and said, "Ribeye?" My brother said, "No, it's Trouble!!!"

My mom explained that the meat had been delivered that day and she thought we could celebrate our hard work with steaks. THAT is where dinner ended for my dad that night. He couldn't eat another bite - and got up from the table. Because he had made Trouble a pet, he didn't eat meat again until my mom showed him a receipt from Great Scot to prove the meat he was eating was NOT Trouble but in fact purchased at a grocery store.

When we get together, we tell this story and still laugh about all the 'TROUBLE'our calf caused. LOL