Last weekend, we hopped back onto the cat ownership bandwagon--we now have two beautiful "blue" cats. One Russian Blue-ish, and the other Maine Coon-ish. The Russkie has a food allergy that I'm solving with my homemade food, and the other one could care less about real food made with real ingredients--thank god he eats meat scraps.
The Sunday after Thanksgiving, we decided to go buy a whole duck, after having duck breast for Thanksgiving and seeing cat approval to the point of passivity and mommy-baby loving on each other (even though they're both males). I don't know if it was the meat or the fat that did it, but there are no more aggressive episodes of male posturing in this house.
I don't know about you, but I was under the impression (up til now) that duck was one of those foods eaten by 8-figure income earners who ride around in long cars, wear mostly tuxedos, and speak in a Hawwwvawwd Yawwwd accent. Duck, crab, and a few other foods were classified as "rich only" foods in my mind for most of my life...until I went hunting for one (with shopping cart, not gun).
I already know liver is talked about in rich circles, and that liver is one of the cheapest organ meats widely available...if you can get past the taste. All those "Hannibal Lechter" foods (minus the fava beans and Chianti) are actually cheap by comparison with muscle meats, and yield much more nutrition.
It isn't the meat--it's what they do to the meat that makes it sound rich, French, and starts the mental imagery which leads to assumptions.
Duck IS available in regular grocery stores, although you'd have to skirt past the multitudes of turkeys out on display this time of year to find them. Having found one at Kroger for less than the cost of a whole chicken (per pound), I was quite surprised on two counts: availability and price.
I am aware that like lamb (another "rich food"), duck deflates from a good-sized bird down to a huge pile of grease with little meat, but I didn't mind--the grease was what I was after. You cannot order just the duck fat online without paying a hefty price, then again for shipping--it must be FedEx'd overnight in a refrigerated carton. Local sources here were nil--I even tried foreign markets, Jewish delis, butchers, and restaurant supply stores as well as the international foods aisles at grocery stores. My only option was to make the fat myself, which I did.
Now that I have what I was really after, I can do all the things that people do with "rubber chicken": soup, salads (instead of sandwiches), casseroles, etc. I can do RUBBER DUCK meals--that amuses me. Since there's only two adults in the house, we don't need much meat in the way of leftovers.
Now, on the hunt for goose (pun intended). There are several spots where real live Canadian geese hang out in this town, never flying south for winter (maybe this IS south for them?). I figure if I get desperate enough, I can just drive to one of their spots, grab one, wring out the fat, and put it down again.
Thinking of Ebeneezer Scrooge, or even Scrooge McDuck? Hell, I'm going to EAT one of them!
As for the crab, I had the same experience with dungeness crab--after reading about the nutritional aspects of crab from Primal Toad's blog, I went a-Googling to see which crab type was highest in Omega-3's, and came up with dungeness. A local grocery store had a sale, so in I went and bought a few clusters. Since Hubby grew up in crab country, he knew just how to dismantle and dispose of the unwanted parts, and the four of us proceeded to chow down. As obligate carnivores, my cats eat as Paleo as their biology allows.
Yes, dungeness crab is expensive compared to other meats (even other crabs), but the ratio of Omega-3 to Omega-6 (if I did my math right) was astounding and worth every penny! I don't even want to know how much nutrition I bought that day--it would boggle my mind.
As economic and nutritional myths come tumbling down around here, I'm anxious to see what the goose hunt reveals to me.
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