Warning! This post contains images of dead skinned rabbit!
Food, Inc. made me determined to eat off of the industrialized food grid. So, we went to the Mayflower Poultry Company in East Cambridge (home of the notorious “Live Poultry Fresh Killed” sign, as featured in Infinite Jest). I used to live not one block away from the Fresh Killed store, and it happened to be the same year that I stopped being a total vegetarian and started to eat fish and chicken. Despite my fledgling carnivorous habits, the Fresh Killed store intimidated me. I pictured cages full of squawking chickens, waiting for their turn on the chopping block. I decided to go when a neighbor told me that they sold fresh eggs, for eggs seemed innocent. I walked into the store and the smell made my nose buckle. It was a rancid smell, with overtones of iron and raw chicken. The people behind the counter starting barking at me, asking me in broken English how they could help me, and my eyes darted around the store, looking in vain for eggs. I saw chicken parts stacked in a display case, legs thighs breasts wings, a mess of goose-fleshed pale yellow skin and knobby bone. I saw freezers full of cow parts. I saw a sign: Goat, $4/pound. Gagging, I backed out of the store and fled home to nosh on some tofu or something.
Fast forward 6 years. I’m a full, unabashed, enthusiastic carnivore who is on a quest to find the freshest, leanest, least industrialized meat that I can. Enter, the rabbit.
The rabbit! We don’t eat rabbit in America, but they’re pretty common eats in Europe. In fact, Mr. P ate rabbit once a week growing up, and has fond memories of being 7 years old and going with his father to buy freshly-killed rabbit from an old man in Brittany, who would select a rabbit, break its neck, and then skin it for them right there. “Did he give you a lollipop?” I asked.
It’s precisely because rabbits are not typically consumed in America that I want to consume them. Rabbit farmers are small-time producers who use clean old-fashioned farming techniques in order to ensure their yields. Unhealthy rabbits don’t breed, and the success of their operation depends on breeding. They don’t use growth hormones, cloning, or selective breeding in order to produce monster fatty rabbits. And no slaughterhouse are involved; the rabbit probably meet its end in the open-air, not surrounded by bacteria-ridden equipment and non-unionized low wage workers.
So we went to the Fresh Killed store and bought a rabbit. Now, that’s such an easy thing to say — “we went to the Fresh Killed store and bought a rabbit.” But even after all these years of meat-eating and all these good reasons for wanting to eat rabbit, it was mentally difficult thing to do. The enormity hit me when the young black man at the Fresh Killed store said “You want this one?” and held up an entirely skinned dead rabbit, head and eyes intact, for our consideration. (He did cut off the head upon request).
To properly convey what I’m talking about, behold:
I felt completely squimish around the rabbit, so Mr. P took responsibility for preparing the rabbit. He felt no such queasiness:
So I absconded to the living room couch with a book. After awhile an awful racket coming from the kitchen permeated my consciousness. Banging, thumbing, some grunting. “What are you doing?” I called, putting down my book and going into the kitchen, to see (Eee! Eee! Eee!):
I was under the impression that the rabbit would be roasted, but apparently the French prefer to stew their rabbits. (In fact, they prefer to stew everything, in wine, with carrots, celery, and onion. Could this explain the French paradox? If grilling, roasted, and frying meat oxidizes cholesterol and makes it unhealthy, perhaps the French escape this by stewing.) In any case, the finished result tasted like lean chicken:
