a huntin' we will go

OK, though the fiance and I go target shooting, we're not quite up to actually hunting. Though I pondered whether I how accurately I could shoot a deer from 150 yards away once, I'm not quite up to taking a life. I think maybe I'd be able to do wild turkey. (Oddly enough I saw like half a dozen turkey hanging around the parking lot near the Greek Theater today.)

For me to be a hunter, I think I'll have to come to terms with my relationship to these animals and our place in the whole cycle of life. The idea is to gain enough skill so that the shots kill the animal as quickly as possible. Nothing worse than a lame hunter creating a lame animal. Plus too a hunter has to have a certain amount of butchering skills, and I'm not up for that at this point. I think for now, I'll just terrorize the sheets of paper.

BUT, D's coworker's husband, does go hunting, thus D is the recipient of numerous slabs of meat that are rock solid in the freezer.

I am told folks in Alaska have freezers like this cuz everyone knows someone else who either hunts and/or fishes. And well, elk and deer folk are large LARGE creatures that you only need to down one to feed like 5 people for months. Supermarkets have no need to sell meat when people can easily go "shopping" in their neighbor's freezer.

Anyway, that brings us to a possible defrosting cooking day of said meat (elk, wild boar). We're contemplating using the meats in various Filipino dishes: kaldereta, adobo. Not quite sure yet, but something to make the meat tender and another something to make it familiar to the palate.

I imagine the days before markets when meat came from whatever was hunted that day. Meat was a special thing that didn't show up on the plate every day. When the hunter was thankful to the Creator, to the animal, for the sacrifices that day. Perhaps I'm being overly nostalgic, but I'd like to think that there was a time when most people had a greater relationship to the food that they ate when it was something that helped them live, as opposed to food that creates disease today (excessive sugars, processed foods that cause diabetes and heart disease).

bon appetit!