Due to the early January lull when the rest of the world seems to still be on holiday. Last weeks office life was at a much slower pace than could be productive. The morning football conversation extended beyond its mandatory 20 minutes and peaked on Friday at an hour and a half.
Work, as it was, centered around half-hearted researching, most of the day went on teasing each other and reading stuff out from the internet.
One viral email caught everyone’s attention and made me think about the nature of our dinner and our expectations of it.
LOOKS GOOD
EASY TO COOK
PLENTY OF THEM ABOUT TOO!!
As we watched to squeals of horror, the question everyone was asking, well more shrieking than asking, was ‘Would you? – Could you!”.
Mr. Bojangles (the resident song and dance man) has lived in Senegal for ten years so he speaks with an authority the others cant muster.
“In lots of the parts of the world people eat all kinds of stuff”
Would you? Have you? You didn’t!
“I wouldn’t be surprised if I had, in a lot of places people just need to eat, you never know what you’re being served ”
In the Southern US and much of eastern europe squirrels are well known as good eating, a few people shoot them to eat here, and a couple of the more adventurous London restaurants have them on the menu.
Well they call squirrels ‘tree rats’, maybe these fellas should be re-branded as ‘ground squirrels’. Hmmmm?
Thanks for reading
Bushwacker.
12 comments:
Mmm, memories of Monty Python's 'Rat on a Stick'... very popular in medieval times.
:-)
Cheers,
Mungo
Well, squirrel tastes fantastic, but while a squirrel is nothing but a rat with a bushy tail, their diets are quite different.
Would I eat a New York City rat? Doubtful. Would I eat a country rat with a fairly natural diet? I don't see why not.
In social interactions, prejudices reduce opportunities. Food is no different.
Grey Squirrels are good to eat and you help to keep the poplation down. They are very detructive to our trees and have helped push away our native reds.
Eat a squirrel a day....that's what I say. Do they sell 'em in Tesco's?
Pablo.
Wow! Singeing the rat and everything! Personally? I'd skin it.
You may notice the "tree rat" on my game strap in this picture. Got me a nice big gray squirrel the other day - weighed nearly a pound dressed and cleaned!
He should go well in with a walnut sauce...
HAGC
very interested in your walnut sauce. how you you get the astringency of the pith to go away?
SBW
I'm not sure I could eat squirrel. I think they're cute. Although I think deer are cute and I eat venison, so I probably could get over my squirrel issue.
Definitely could not eat rat.
Here's another cheer for "tree rats". And I'm sure a bunch of the different species of ground rats are probably quite edible and tasty too.
I'm a little sketchy around rats, though, mostly for their affinity for things like ebola and bubonic plague. The ground squirrels here in CA (not rats, but squirrels that live in the ground) are sometimes responsible for campground and park closures when the bubonic bug pops up.
Would I? If necessary. But it probably wouldn't be my first choice.
Re: Walnut sauce
Astringency? Pith? You mean the brown skin over the nut meat? Why you blanch them, dear boy! (Was that English enough?) Seriously, get the nut meats and a big pot of boiling water, then dunk them in for like a minute - not longer - then right into an ice bath. Skins should come off. But actually, I rarely do this because the Chandler walnuts I use aren't bitter at all...
hm tasty, not
drew
drewdunnrespect.blogspot.com
I'd have no problem eating rats, other than there's not much to them, but then I get the same negative reaction when I eat rabbit....."You can't eat that it's fluffy!"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2br0f4mOcqE
Please check out this link; will post more about another tribe which is actually called "rat eaters".
Nice one Shooter
SBW
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