3:00 snapshot #755

[urbpan]

This is the kind of thing we have at the zoo that I walk by a million times and don't think about any more, but when I stop and look at it I think, man that's really cool.

I made rabbit stew today and learned a few things. Rabbits taste like chicken, more or less, which is what everyone says about every meat that's not one of the big three. Rabbits are mostly made of very small bones. Modern people have gotten use to eating food that either has no bones, or has big obvious bones you eat the meat off of. (I guess people who eat fish are used to the many little bones in fishes, but I rarely touch the stuff.) Rabbit, like all meat that isn't one of the big 3 (or turkey), comes with sticker shock. It probably costs closer to what meat should cost, if animal agriculture was composed of small scale farms that treated animals like animals and not like raw materials. I don't know that my five dollar a pound rabbit (rabbitS actually--I pulled out 4 shoulder blades from the stew) lived a great life, but I bet it was better than the average 99 cents a pound chicken's life.

"Tastes like chicken," I realized some time ago, is code for "really bland." I wish that I'd put more veggies and spices in, but I was nervous about screwing it up. This was my first attempt at anything with the crock pot, and now I'm not afraid of it anymore, so I'll feel more free to wing it. I think I'll do goat curry next.

Comments

[urbpan.livejournal.com]

I considered eating the bones and coughing them up in a pellet later, but I thought that might be too uncomfortable.

[lizblackdog.livejournal.com]

Also it's hard to make that work if you didn't swallow the fur.

[plantmom.livejournal.com]

Bwahahaha!

BTW, I have similar issues with whole chickens, as far as bones are concerned. It's a little bit of a pain in the ass to skin/debone a roasted chicken, but I'd still rather do it than buy deboned, skinned chicken breasts or thighs, as many of my customers do. For one thing, when it's cooked before deboning, the flavor is better. For another, once it's cooked, I have an easier time discerning meat from gristle, so I probably trim more accurately than I would if I cut it up before cooking.