Mindful Carnivore by Tovar Cerulli

Author:Tovar Cerulli
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pegasus Books

One week in late October when Cath was out of town, I thawed a hunk of moose steak, a gift from a local hunter. My first attempt at cooking and eating a chunk of wild meat seemed like an oddly private thing. If I was serious about going after meat on the hoof, I had to consider not only philosophical questions, but a practical one as well: How would it feel to cook and eat the flesh of a wild mammal?

After years of veganism, chicken and fish had seemed strange enough. Handling their flesh, I was intensely aware of their origins as living beings. Some of the chickens were ones I had seen pecking away in a friend’s grassy yard. Some of the fish were ones I had caught and killed. Once they had been reduced to food, though, I didn’t dwell on them as individual creatures.

Moose was different. Under my hand, the cool, firm muscle felt odd as I sliced. I sautéed it in a cast-iron skillet and made a creamy sauce with onions and mushrooms. The first bite felt strange, the flavor only distantly familiar. And there was more to it than just the texture and taste of red meat. With a piece of moose between my teeth, the huge, dark animal stood there, vivid in my imagination. Perhaps my awareness of the individual creature stemmed from his sheer size. Perhaps it stemmed from my categorization of moose as part of the local landscape, but—unlike cows or pigs—not part of the modern American diet. With the moose in mind, I took his body into mine uneasily, aware that I was in nutritional relationships not just with mammals in general, but with this one in particular.

A night or two later, I sat down to the leftovers and found that the strangeness was gone. The flesh went down easily, tasting rich and good.

The next week, when I thawed another package the hunter had given me and prepared a venison scaloppine, Cath nodded her approval as well.

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