Last fall Kelly and I attended a "sheep and goat symposium" at Cornell and the Cornell Sheep farm. It was good. One of the sessions was learning how to evaluate the health of your animals by feeling parts of their body. New to me was the anatomy terminology. I was expecting "this is the rib cage, this is the shoulder" but it was more "this is the rump roast, this is the rack of ribs, this is the leg roast from here to here". You should have seen the expression on the goat she was demonstrating on.
I grew up fishing and and part of fishing was always eating, but in the middle is butchering. I happen to be very good at cutting up fish, as it was the kids job to do this as the dads/granddads were cleaning up. Boys will be boys, but messes were made and that is how I learned the bulk of my fish anatomy. I read this revelatory blog post today and it struck me how many people get squeamish at this kind of stuff. Many people who have been around when I am cutting up salmon or halibut or whatever have made a comment like "I have never seen a fish get disassembled" and I am always a little surprised for a second. My immediate reaction is always "well how do you eat fish then?", but then I remember that, really, not everyone does eat fish.
When I started hunting and taking apart rabbits, squirrels, etc., there was a slight adjustment but it was the same process really: keeping the guts intact while getting everything separated from the meat. Its a hands-on kind of learning, bottom-line.
When we started buying meat from a farmer, and discussing prices and cut sheets and getting into the carnal issues that get an animal she raised into my freezer in manageable pieces, it struck me then how much is involved in the butchering process. Most of the price of those sides of meat is in the butchering. I hear about people's grandparents butchering, through the furniture we inherit, or old tools and saws laying around, and now I guess I know why - the price of meat includes butchering! Once we ordered a whole side of beef as ground beef, because we felt we knew more what to do with ground beef than 5lb roasts! Clearly, I am late to this revelation, but we have been brought up eating more ground beef recipes than anything else because ground beef is cheap, because its easy for the butcher (amongst other things), because you can practically put the whole side of beef into a wonderful machine called a grinder and out comes 1lb tubes of meat paste. Great!
Lately I have been feeling an urge to eat things with bones in them. I do not know what is wrong with me. Chicken wings, ribs, pork chops, turkey legs, ham hocks, I am drooling at my desk here people (again). I even want to crack those bones sometimes and eat the marrow, which I have never done. I do not know what is wrong with me. But, I own goats, and you should see the expression on their faces when I am back there feeding them and sometimes give them a little squeeze here and there.
As a closing note, one of my favorite experiences at the zoo with my kids was when my 4-yr old daughter ran up to the duck pond and yelled "Oo Daddy look ducks! Yummm.." and the gaggle of adolescent vegan school-girls nearby shrank away in disgust. Apparently, whatever is wrong with me, is genetic and inheritable.
David Korten's Keynote Presentation Now Online
15 years ago
Please stop by on Chicken Day! We invested in a plucker this year which may be my favorite thing Bill has ever bought me. It's awesome that your kids know where meat comes from as many much older kids don't.
ReplyDeleteI am heartened by folks who break down the barrier between meat and animal and I understand the post you linked to, especially when he talks about the judgements from other people. I used to roll my eyes and walk away when people said "I could never kill my own meat" but now I grab a soap box and rail on about CAFOs and how people are exploited in slaughter houses. The conversation of raising my own meat never comes up unless someone else starts is, so I figure if they are going to initiate judgement of me, I'm gonna make them feel gross about buying meat at a super market.