“James, hunting Eurasian collared doves in my backyard, with a pellet
gun, accidentally released into Bahamas 1982, reached Utah by 1997,
Utah allows year round hunting, will be eaten on Liver-Eater quest.
Two breasts stuffed with sage, wrapped in bacon, grilled on Shayne’s
portable unit.”
-Ishmael
I did not read this email on the way to Utah last week, so did not realize I was going to owe the two doves who wake me up every morning with their soothing song an apology for eating one of their cousins…The dove that Ishmael heard cooing outside of is window when he woke up one late summer day on a mountain above Salt Lake City Utah.
The Dove wrapped in bacon, if not for the bacon, would have tasted like a cross between a rabbit and a Cornish game hen, I think. Really, it was okay, like diner chicken, better than chicken nuggets.
Elk burgers were better than any burger I have eaten.
Elk steak was the best tasting food I have eaten, recently killed by a bow hunter I met within an hour of my arrival above Salt Lake City.
Rabbit, cooked in some manner I did not note, as I was writing and Shane was back at the camper putting the finishing touches on Bugs Bunny’s tale of horror, was very lean, and tasted to me like baked chicken thighs minus the chicken fat, but with the texture of pork. I did get a bunny shoulder blade caught between two teeth and was warned to treat the bunny meat like fish and be careful of small bones.
Black bear—which I think Shayne’s next door neighbor killed in his yard—was delicious. Shayne and Ishmael declared that with bear, it all depends on what the omnivore has been eating and avoiding dumpster-fed bear is ideal. Apparently they will even eat the contents of latrine pits.
The next morning, Shayne made bear stew over fried eggs, which was the best meal of the week.
Prairie butter, made from beef bone marrow, was simply delicious and very filling when slathered on English muffins. Next year Ishmael says we are eating elk marrow.
Salmon that Shayne caught in a Sound off of Seattle, was the best fish I have eaten.
The possum and coyote that Shayne sent me pictures of after they made the mistake of trespassing on his territory and ended up hanging from his off hand, were not, as promised, fed to me. Indeed, he deemed them too unsavory for his dogs, who eat rabbits whole and told me he threw them out for the scavengers.
As for liver, raw beef liver was consumed by these modern mountain men before my watering eyes. I managed to get down a portion of the cooked version, but that was as close as I got to organ eating.
As far as eating out, the best place was Irmas, an authentic old western bar in gaudy style on the ground floor of a hotel in downtown Cody. For $2.50 a bowl, one can have for breakfast, lunch or dinner, a pork and green chili stew that was delicious, with no grease and very little fat.
Eating in Jackson Hole, Utah, and Cody in various places, I discovered the aggressive coffee pour greeting habit in these parts, where patrons waiting to be seated will have coffee poured for them at the door and will then be served by a dedicated coffee pot greeter throughout the meal. I have never encountered such a thing in Maryland, Virginia, Delaware, Pennsylvania, West Virginia or Ohio, which is pretty much the extent of my former dining range.
Generally speaking, in Northwestern Utah, Wyoming and Southwestern Montana the kitchen staff is all Latino. The wait staff is a mix of local corn-fed girls and imported Russian and Romanian babes, who had smiles, figures and personalities so far superior to what I am accustomed to in Harm City that I felt like I was on a bitch-free alien planet. Suffice it to say, the local women seem to have been largely of Norwegian ancestry, and pretty much everybody I met had been born in September, drawing an obvious link between the fierce winters, convivial company and demographics of the high plains region.
Books by James LaFond
In Baltimore, it's not just the women, it's their male spawn who are bitches, as I was reminded while out driving today, and as you pointed out in your book ON BITCHES.
Funny, whenever I've eaten Hungarian-prepared rabbit stew, I don't even remember any bones, bc a Hungarian wife would have deboned the meat before it ever hit the table...and that's eating it as a toddler as well.
Llll Hun, the whole rabbit carcass goes in, beer, mustard, spices, no wives were present, so......
The West is far superior to everything east of the Rockies. It's a different country, with different people, different nature, everything. Maybe more like Australia than New York.
I got into an argument with a guy I was serving with about whether possum was edible (except for in emergencies) or a garbage animal, similar to crow. He was from Tennessee and maintained that it was. The next day, he shows up triumphantly waving a book called The Joy of Cooking, with a recipe for fried possum. The recipe starts off: "feed possum persimmons for two weeks..." I call that a victory: anything you have to feed on exotic fruit for half a month to make edible is not edible.
Ate scorched, waterlogged rabbit in SERE school for half a week straight. Was not impressed. Snake stew was okay, lots of bones, though.
Salmon, deer, dove, elk, salmon are all kosher, but trapping the ungulates to slaughter them is a pain in the ass. A snare won't cut it-they're likely to injure themselves and become unkosher in the process. Collapsing wire mesh cages are probably the best way to go.
Back when I lived in the Northeast, I really wanted to go up to Maine and slaughter a moose. The logistics didn't work out and it's unlikely to happen now. We do have a lot of roe deer where I live, so hopefully once I learn how to slaughter properly, I can poach one of them. And down south there are wild mountain goats.