Tuesday, December 13, 2011

That Sounds Delicious

I delivered four batches of sinful caramel rolls today, and responded to oohs and awes with the appropriate amount of humility. Oh, yes, it's homemade brioche. No, no big trouble. Only 3 sticks of butter. Just a few hours, really. Anyone could do it if they had the recipe.

Then I hesitate when they ask for the recipe. I consider leaving out key ingredients, or substituting salt for sugar. I consider changing the name of the recipe.

Sticky Caramel Pecan Rolls become significantly less appetizing when renamed Sticky Anal Gravy Rolls.

It's why those cookies are called pecan sandies and not nut sacks, and garbanzo beans are garbanzo beans and not faceless fetal baby heads. Snails are escargot because no one in their right mind would eat them otherwise, and rocky mountain oysters...well, you can fancy that up any way you'd like, but balls are balls.

Living as we do in a rural area, it is not uncommon to run across people who will admit to eating, and enjoying, all manner of woodland creatures. Squirrels seem to be especially popular out here in the county. I don't know what all a squirrel hunt entails, maybe enticing them into your backyard with one of those corncobs on a stick, and then hitting them with a shovel?

I'm not a very good country person.

The Husband has a friend who's going to get us a deer. But 'get' I mean 'shoot', though I prefer to believe that all meat comes directly from the grocery store, where it sprang forth from nothingness into neatly packaged styrofoam trays.

I might have a hard time if I think about it too much. If I think about that graceful animal prancing and overpopulating and whatever else deer do. Maybe instead of deer, I'll call it...chocolate.

9 comments:

  1. I spent the first 12 years of my life thinking that all food sprang from nothingness into neat little packaged styrofoam trays at the supermarket. I do not remember the exact moment that this fun little illusion was shattered, but it may have been when my mom was explaining to my younger sister what venison was: "It's Bambi, Sweetie." I turned vegetarian overnight. (Don't worry, I'm back to my wicked meat-eating ways now, that was over 20 years ago.)

    best,
    MOV

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  2. Would this be a bad time to mention that i went deer hunting his year, my second year, and that I went on a falconry trip Saturday and we got a squirrel?

    -Motaki, Aspiring Falconer

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  3. I was "forced" to go deer hunting when I was a kid, but I secretly had no desire whatsoever to actually shoot a deer.
    Bambi-ism.
    I never did shoot one.

    After several years of the rifle being stolen by someone and then miraculously returned after my father's passing, I now have the weapon of my childhood. But I don't plan to use it. I have no idea whether it works or not. I gave up beef a long time ago for BSE reasons after studying that disease. I now eat buffalo instead.

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  4. A. Thanks for the baby head image of garbanzo beans. I love them, but could never put my finger on what about their shape was so damned disturbing to me.

    B. I once heard someone refer to canned cranberry sauce as "Muppet phlegm," which is another apropos image that really sticks with you, trust me.

    C. I grew up in a hunting family, so kind of take all the game meat for granted. After a particularly fruitful fall, my father gave us both caribou and white-tail deer steaks, which we served at the same meal. I did not tell the kids we were having "Bambi" AND "Rudolph" for dinner. But I totally could have.

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  5. Deer tastes like liver to me. Even the kind that isn't scared out of its mind when it is being murdered.
    Moving to Montana, people just LOVE killing shit here. Thankfully we don't socialize any more so people have stopped giving us local meat.
    I have nothing against eating meat, but I think the meat should have no hope before I eat it. I want it to know it was raised just to be delicious.
    Eating something that was happy and free just seems mean.

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  6. I'm pretty sure that's exactly what a squirrel hunt entails. If you should try that, I'd like photographic evidence, please.

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  7. Oh my... Pecan Sandies.. err.. Nut Sacks are my favorite cookie. Just wait til the Rooster finds out.

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  8. I'd never met a hunter until I married one. Three decades later, the fact that once a year he dresses up from head to toe in blaze orange and tromps through the woods in the hope of shooting one of Bambi's descendents still freaks me out a little.

    Oh, and I have my blogroll set to show the name of the blog and the title of its most current post underneath it. Right now, in the right column of my blog, it says:

    Southern Fried Children
    That Sounds Delicious

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  9. So I notice that even though you often share your recipes with us this time it is not there...not sharing??

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