Forest Treasures

[snousle]

Sigh... dogs, whaddaya do with them.



We have QUITE a bit of carrion lying about in the forest, and while I would rather Kitsune not chew on it, it's impossible to stop her short of keeping her fenced in 24-7. It's pretty much her favorite thing in the world, and she gathers it up and manages her collection as if it was fine wine. I don't know if it's "bad for her" or anything but I figure that if dogs were harmed by decomposing flesh they would have gone extinct a long time ago.

The interesting thing is how selective she is. If it's too fresh, she doesn't chew on it, but instead buries it and retrieves it later. Rotten meat makes me gag, to the extent that I can hardly take out the trash without getting the dry heaves if there's something like sour chicken juice in there. But properly aged carrion smells rather good, sort of like a cross between beef jerky and country ham, and in this I think I am picking up on the same elements she does.

The idea that humans were, historically, more oriented around scavenging than hunting is something taken rather seriously by paleontologists, so it would not surprise me if we had a built in sense for when it's good to eat. In an era obsessed with freshness, we are actually neglecting a huge swath of our native culinary instincts - we are so unaccustomed to distinguishing between "edible" and "dangerous" that anything outside the bounds of perfect freshness has become either taboo or so formalized and regulated that we no longer need to exercise our own judgment.

I will admit to being tempted. But while I do have an adventurous palate, I do have my limits...

Comments

[bitterlawngnome.livejournal.com]

some of the fermented meat products that were common in mediaeval europe make me wonder how we ever survived as a species

[danthered.livejournal.com]

Ooh, gosh. I hope Kitsune doesn't plan to fly anywhere any time soon; by Federal regulations each passenger is allowed only one piece of carrion.

[dhpbear.livejournal.com]

THWAP

[dhpbear.livejournal.com]

dogs, whaddaya do with them.

The (your) mind reels :)

[come-to-think.livejournal.com]

The old-time northern Eskimos, who did a great deal of hunting, rotted their meat in lieu of cooking it. Cooking, of course, would have required an absurd amount of scarce fuel. It was one of those crazy things the white folks did.

[(Anonymous)]

Helps to be in a cold climate. Gastronomica had an article a while back identifying Inuit cuisine as a precursor of modern haute cuisine; their exquisite use of fermentation and freezing is way beyond ours. The introduction of plastic buckets was so disruptive to this that many people actually died as a result.

[snousle.livejournal.com]

That was me, danged auto logout...

[broduke2000.livejournal.com]

Reminds me of an incident with my dog.

We had just had a mud party, but I was beginning to smell something. What I didn't pay attention to, was my dog hiking up the mountain a few feet to smell.

Days passed, and the smell increased. I was sure that someone had shit in the mud, and wasn't too happy about it.

More days passed and the smell lingered. We couldn't find any shit.

Well, I finally noticed the dog. So I followed to where she was. DUUH!

Turns out a deer had slid down the mountain and crashed into the telephone pole, just above the mudpit. It had been decomposing for about 2 weeks.

We dragged it to an open area and let the buzzards have a picnic. But even they waited a few days before having their fiesta.

[barbarian-rat.livejournal.com]

Today we are all told about kitchen sanitation aimed at pathogens that may or may not be in meat. It's not clear to me if mass produced meat has the potential for more pathogens than wild game or not, and if prehistoric meat had more or less potential pathogens than today.

[equinas.livejournal.com]

Well, we still hang and age our beef; it doesn't taste right otherwise.

When I lived in Saudi Arabia, I would buy these gorgeous looking steaks...the Saudis imported the best beef from Ireland, NZ, etc. But I'd have to marinate the fuck out of them because according to Islamic food requirements, they can't age them. So that blood-fresh taste just tasted wrong to my western palate.