Monday, March 4, 2013

Squirrels for supper

I ate a squirrel once.  While it's nothing to brag about in my West Virginia hometown, eating wild animals will win you an eco-foodie audience in a major metropolitan area.


Just this week, City Paper posted an article about cooking and eating squirrel [Give Squirrel a Whirl], with links to a brown gravy recipe that'll make your mouth water.

Then there's the Girl Hunter book a friend gave me last Christmas, which weaves recipes for wild delicacies like boar and pheasant in between adventure stories of hunting them.  Many of these recipes call for gourmet or game ingredients that haven't yet arrived at the Baltimore food markets I frequent, but my trusty old Simply In Season cookbook recommends easily-found staples to concoct probably the Best Marinade Recipe Ever - designed for grilling venison, or just about anything, for that matter.

But I digress.

In case you need more environmental or health reasons to try squirrel, here are a few from Michelle's article:

  • As a food source, squirrels are a locavore’s dream: abundant, sustainable, free-range
  • Squirrel meat is high in omega-3 essential fatty acids
  • 80% of squirrels don't make it to their first birthday... i.e. something is going to eat a squirrel so it might as well be us!
While some say a squirrel is just a rat with a cuter outfit - I say it's what's for dinner.


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