Three-Meat Sunday Dinner - The Clean, The Unclean and The Wild

Sunday Dinner with Beef, Pork and Venison

I have previously extolled the merits of eating clean living, grass-fed animals--in my opinion an excellent food source for homo sapiens. I have previously confessed to being a committed carnivore. I have frequently attempted to maintain a low-carb lifestyle. Maybe you think I make it sound like I practice EXTREME EATING. I say, give me a break! Allow me to be me and also allow me to include an occasional element of hyperbole in my posts.

I have also previously referenced, in blog posts, the eating of some unusual animals (bizarre, if you will)--peacocks on the farm, sea slugs in Asia, frog legs and ostrich here in the city.

There are many in our world who cannot bear the thought of eating any animals. For some it becomes a moral issue and for others, a health issue.

I do not share those views and I wish they would be as tolerant of mine as I try to be of theirs. PETA tends to not be tolerant. I mock their acronym: People Eating Tasty Animals.

Our lives intersect with animals in many different ways. Beginning at infancy, we seem to be hopelessly drawn to them. Man seems to have a special bond with Dog. I do sympathize with those who do not want to eat animals with cute faces. I am usually able to get past that. The raising of animals for food and money is something I witnessed on the farm from my first moments of life. I even lost interest in the pet pig (Skippy) I played with one summer. In the fall, the weather got cold, I returned to school, and the pet pig turned into a fat hog ready for market. I forgot about Skippy. He remained extra friendly to the end, according to reports I recall from my father. I am very glad that we do not need to use our pet dogs as a food source, however.

One of my husband's friends likes the following verse:

All things bright and beautiful,
All creatures great and small,
All things wise and wonderful,
The ______ (you fill in ethnicity) eat them all!

Pork meat was designated as "unclean" in biblical times. It had nothing to do with pigs love for mud, which I observed first-hand during hot summers on the farm. My Dad always claimed the hogs (that is the word we usually used, although not for baby pigs) were a cleaner animal, using designated areas in their pens for their waste deposits. Chickens, for example, have neither the brains nor the butts to accomplish such higher level functions. We might theorize just where chickens brains might be located!

Many of the animals which we abhor--or at least try to keep from entering our houses--are food sources in other countries. In Thailand, for example, a fat rat caught in a rice paddy is a valued food. I trap a few mice every fall when they seek shelter in my house. They are very cute. Sometimes I wince a little when I find a bloodied mother mouse with its cute face smushed in my trap. I mostly worry about where her babies are--dying in my house!

Crawling insects like ants are fried and consumed in Africa. My husband declined the offer to eat some when he spent part of a college summer in Liberia. I set up little squares of ant killer--it's just boric acid in a thick sugar mixture which the ants love. Every spring when the ants come marching in looking for a sweet fix, I set out little dabs of the sweet Terro liquid ant killer. They eat their fill and return to their nests only to poison their friends in the colony.

An animal we all love is the deer. Deer in Michigan are OCCUPYING the city in a more and more problematic way. Gardeners are very frustrated. (My problems are primarily with rabbits, and I spray many bottles of putrified egg solids in my yard to discourage their nibbling). Accidents and deaths from hitting deer occur more and more frequently on our roads and streets, even on busy streets right in the city. I think we need to eat more deer until there is a safer balance! I propose a city-wide barbecue, inviting the poor and homeless: bring a dish to pass if you can and a container for some take-out.

As cute as Bambi is, his place is in the forest (somewhere "up north"), not in our city backyards, munching hostas.

Cows are also very cute. We called them beef cattle on the farm and typically heifers and steers were included. Beef products are my favorite meat. It was likely the first source of meat protein I tasted after being exclusively breast-fed for nearly nine months.

Today I was invited to have a beef, pork and venison (deer) roast dinner at my aunt's house. This deer was kept in that chest freezer in my garage much of last year and I tasted it for the first time (probably in over thirty years) along with the other meats, clean and "unclean." The deer roast was seasoned with soy sauce and garlic and lemon and a bit of ginger. I would like to try it prepared as a steak on a gas grill next time to get a better sense of the taste. The deer is the darker meat on the front of the plate.

Here is the full traditional 3-Roast Sunday Dinner at my Aunt V's house. I forgot to plate the corn. It would have added a bit of color, even though I claim to not believe in eating it, another example of why my brothers and others think I am nuts.

Beef,  pork, venison, mashed potatoes with gravy, roasted fresh vegetables, frozen corn,  lettuce salad,  homemade applesauce and red (claret) wine

Of course a meal like this is always served with mounds of potatoes:

and for dessert, two homemade pies, pumpkin and apple-blueberry!