A few months ago, a friend and neighbor introduced me to the UK series River Cottage. It’s a series about a man who left London to live in the country and raise his own food, both vegetables and animals. After watching the series, I wanted to do a review.
In writing the review, I wanted to give a little of my background. And in doing so, I ended up being very self reflective in my growth of attitude of the food I eat. The post, I realized, needed to be split into two. The River Cottage review will come in a few days.
Many, many years ago (more than I’d like to admit), when I was working at my first job, I remember one fall where some employees had created a stuffed deer and depicted gunshot wounds on it complete with blood stains. On it, they put a sign to the effect of “Bambi killer” and put it outside a hunter’s office. I didn’t have much of an opinion of hunters one way or another back then, but I didn’t hunt and didn’t personally know anyone that did.
Fast forward to my current job where, for the last few years, I’ve listened to one of my colleagues recount his hunting adventures. He told not only of the hunt itself, but also in the preparations for the hunt: food plots, scoping out locations, etc. Through him, I got a better understanding of hunters and why they hunt.
While I still don’t hunt myself, I do dispatch bunnies in my backyard with a pellet gun and have enjoyed the challenge. Mind you, this wasn’t a hobby born out of the need to kill something, but rather as a way to eliminate a pest that was wreaking havoc on my wife’s gardens.
In 2009, I started this blog and met the likes of Kari Murray and Jim Braaten, who have deepened my understanding of hunters and their philosophies. But it was Tovar Cerulli, who really put things in perspective. Tovar was a vegan who became a hunter. Tovar was the first to link the hunt to our (human’s) connection to the food we eat. Before that, while I knew where our food came from, I never really put much thought into it. Steve Rinella of The Wild Within also has the same philosophy. Although, he takes it to a far greater level and is, in my opinion, a bit over the top with it.
Now being of Chinese decent, I’ve always had an understanding of where my food comes from. We routinely had dishes that included the likes of chicken hearts and gizzards, beef tongue, and other parts of animals most Westerners don’t eat. And we always cooked our fish whole (no fillets). But growing up in the United States, I also took for granted that the beef and pork in my grocery store used to be living, breathing animals.
My wife surprised me, however, when she suggested that we eat the rabbits I shoot in our backyard, even before I shot my first one. We had a copy of the Joy of Cooking, which described how to skin a rabbit. That first one was quite a surreal experience. I was surprised at how easily the hide came off.
We have tried several recipes over the past few years and even had rabbit a few weeks ago. However, it will probably be the last one that will don our dinner table as I decided I didn’t much like the taste of rabbit and neither did anyone else in the family. But the experience of eating what you kill, from firing the shot all the way to the table, is one that I found very gratifying.
Recently, I was once again reminded that meat does not just grow in the grocer’s refrigerated section. The MN DNR has been culling deer in Southeast Minnesota to test them for CWD. Those that tested negative were given away to the public. I got one a few weekends ago. The process of picking up a corpse, dropping it off at a butcher shop, and receiving wrapped meat on the other side isn’t quite like killing, skinning, and chopping up an animal myself (like the rabbit), but it does still link your food to an animal that gave its life for your food.
In watching the UK River Cottage Series, I’ve further reflected on where my food comes from. I don’t look at beef, pork, or chicken the way I did several years, or even several months, ago.
As my regular readers know, I have chickens in my backyard who give my family “farm fresh” eggs on a daily basis. At about two years old, their egg production slows and our intent when they reach that age this fall is to “let them go.” What that means at this point is yet undetermined. Unfortunately, my kids have named our two chickens and while my wife and I haven’t lost sight that they are just chickens, we have grown attached to their personalities. We may sell them to a farm, or have them butchered at a minimal cost. Whether or not they end up on our personal dinner table is something my wife and I still haven’t decided. But the experience of taking care of chickens (more to my wife’s credit than mine) has definitely given me a better understanding of where our food comes from.
A fine and thoughtful post, my friend. Thank you.
And thanks, too, for the mention.
My pleasure, Tovar. I’m consistently impressed with your thoughtful posts, so your comments are very much appreciated.
What a great post and I must say that I’m glad I could let you in on a little bit more of why I hunt. Hunting really does mean allot to me in so many ways, including the satisfaction of obtaining my own food. It is truly a satisfying experience as you have mentioned.
Learning from you has been a great pleasure. And is also why I’m disappointed that you’ve retired. Hopefully you’ll change your mind and come back some day.
You should check out http://www.ThePerennialPlate.com, if you haven’t yet. A local chef who has trained all over the world did web-isodes on local, sustainable living in MN. He is taking the series on the road in May for 6 months, hitting just about every state. He has kept chickens, gone deer hunting, spear fishing for Northern, mushroom foraging, etc., etc.
Thank you, Austin, for pointing me to this site. I hadn’t heard of it. I’ll definitely follow Daniel and Mirra. It’s a bonus that they’re from Minnesota!
I’m a vegetarian, and one of the Perennial Plate episodes, he goes and gets a road kill deer (fresh, obviously), and I debated whether I would eat any of that given the opportunity. I know deer need to be culled for a couple reasons, I don’t necessarily want to be part of that, but a deer that has died and will just be tossed in a landfill? Where is the real harm in that.
I became a vegetarian because I like animals, meat processing is a dangerous job and the corporations that do it treat their employees like livestock. I didn’t want to give them my money anymore. I realize fishing is a bit of a contradiction, but I’m usually relegated to the docks so I often give any keepers away to the other people on the dock, generally low income families.
I appreciate the fact that you thought about eating road kill. You became a vegetarian due to principals against corporations, not because you don’t like meat. There’s definitely no shame in making sure an animal didn’t go to waste.
Great post. I found especially interesting your linking this idea to your Chinese heritage. When I was younger, I lived in Taiwan for a few years. I couldn’t help but notice the difference in presentation that you’ve described; in most dishes, you really know what you’re eating.
Same with shopping–very different from our shrinked-wrapped packages of meat from the grocery story. (But by now, maybe that’s how a lot of people buy their meat over there, too.) I remember going to the market and seeing whole carcasses and large, recognizable chunks of beef or pork on display. Chickens, ducks, or fish, were often alive and butchered on the spot.
If we shopped like that here, maybe we’d have more vegetarians. Or maybe we’d just be more aware of where our food comes from. At the very least, I bet we’d have fewer meat-eating antihunters.
Growing up, I always saw unusual animal body parts, so it was nothing new to me. But after I left my parents house, I shopped for cellophane wrapped meat like everyone else. I still hit the Chinese grocery on occasion, but I lost that connection.
Thankfully, my wife (who is Caucasian) has never had a problem with animal parts and has not only been open to trying them, but also in cooking them. She just cooked a couple of batches of beef tripe recently. I think my kids will benefit from that lack of squimishness. They had no problem watching me skin a rabbit or at looking at the pictures of the deer I picked up from the DNR.
I think if we all shopped like other nationalities (not just Chinese), we would definitely be more aware rather than have more vegetarians, because it would be a part of the culture.
Great post,
There is an undeniable pleasure in the process that starts with anticipation, dreaming and preparing, followed by participating and then ends with a good roast or homemade sausage that friends rave about!
Brian
I haven’t gotten to anticipation part yet, but there is a definite primal satisfaction in obtaining food yourself. Thanx for stopping by and commenting.
Thanks for the kind mention, MNAngler! My Stepson raises a small flock of chickens (about 40) for their egg production and after about two years of age he gives them to a local farmer who butchers and uses them for stewing hens.
I think that’s the route we’ll probably take.
I think that the process of “connecting” with your food on a more personal level is a trend that is building. (And I don’t say that in the negative sense of “trendiness”.) It is a good time for honest, fair chase, ethical hunters to shine a good light on hunting. Each of us enter in through our own experiences. Thank you for sharing yours!
Unfortunately, there are also those hunters who are just in it for the kill. Case in point was an episode of No Reservations where Anthony Bourdain was in the South and you could hear a hunter on a duck hunt say, “I just wanna kill sumthin’!” What made it worse is that they didn’t even eat the ducks they hunted because they didn’t like the taste–that is, until Bourdain showed them how to prepare it. But obviously, these were guys that were just out to shoot an animal and it’s those hunters that give all hunters a bad rep.
Thanx for reading and for leaving a comment.
I really enjoyed this post. I think it’s important for us not to lose sight of where our food comes from, and all too easy to do so. Good for you for making such a conscious effort to connect the dots.
BTW, have you tried making your rabbits into pate? I have had some pretty tasty rabbit pate, lately.
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