Have you ever had....?

When I make meatballs for supper, they are already in ball form. When I make hamburgers, they are already patties. Chicken breasts? Boneless, skinless, sometimes even seasoned. Salmon is filleted, hotdogs are in tubes, spaghetti sauce is ready in the time it takes to open the jar and warm it up. This is all to give the back drop to Joel's question about deer. 

"Have you ever had deer that wasn't in a sausage form?" he casually asked me one night. 

"No. I didn't know it came in another form except for sausage, or maybe strolling across the yard and lying twisted in a ditch," I answered. 

"Well, Pete and Jen have 60 pounds of deer meat in their freezer. Pete said it's in all sorts of cuts, ready to cook and really good." 

"How did they get 60 pounds of ready deer meat in their freezer?" was my next question. I was hoping that maybe there had been a big sale on prepackaged deer, feeling though, like that was somewhat unlikely.

"He shot it and cut it up," Joel answered. Sort of like one might describe the way coffee is made: "Oh, he ground the beans and put them in a filter...."

"He shot it?" I clarified. "It didn't die near his yard or get hit with his car?" 

What followed was the ole' I Just Need a Gun, A Hunting License and a Day In The Woods Conversation; the conversation with the This Is Really No Big Deal undertone. However, there is another undertone worth paying attention to called How It Really Is With Us. Joel shot a pheasant one afternoon. What followed was something pretty close to a B horror movie right in my kitchen. It would have been called "Night of the Crockpot Pheasant Whose Feet Rotted On the Counter." The feet stunk. The pheasant stunk. We ate about 3 bites in order to claim that we had been self sufficient, not relying on some far flung region of the world to feed us. I would not let the kids near it. Even after several hours in a crockpot, it still looked like guaranteed bird flu. Some people like to claim that things they hunt "taste sort of like chicken." Or, that they "liked it, it was just a little gamey." They are lying. This tasted nothing like chicken; and "gamey" has a sort of complimentary adventurous feel to it. Rotty with Bite is much more accurate.

So now I'm back to thinking about this deer who is different from a pheasant in so many ways that make it all the less appealing to actually prepare and eat:

1. It has a personality

2. It is the type of animal people put on calendars and greeting cards

3. It will not fit into my crockpot

However, this Friday I will be buying grainy bread and dark chocolate. I will be helping to complete a meal of venison stew that our dear and, may I say, very brave friends are bringing to our house. Pete would like to take Joel out hunting. I will remind Joel that we have already had deer once this year. It was at least 60 pounds, probably more. It was in the form of a condiment that ran along the entire passenger side of our suburban.