Shh! don’t say the K word.

It is very satisfying to eat food that I have worked hard to obtain and prepare. From pumping water in the Alaskan wilderness, to collecting blackberries to make a pie- drinking and eating these has given me a rewarding aftertaste that store bought products just can’t give. It is near impossible for me to imagine killing another animal for food- but if I grew up thinking this was normal; I can imagine it would bring me similar satisfaction. In The Scavenger’s Guide to Haute Cuisine when Steve Rinella prepares a unique meal of animals, I was impressed but also uncomfortable. I was impressed by how much work Rinella had put into preparing one meal. But the excitement that killing animals such as black bears, and rabbits brought him made me uncomfortable. But Rinella is being honest about what many hunters and hunting magazine’s try to hide.

Middle class and upper class hunters have made the decision to do the dirty work of obtaining meat. These hunters typically aren’t going to the grocery store in addition to hunting these animals. They have a license, and cannot simply have a free- for all shooting round of any animals they find. It is interesting to think of domestic vs. wild animals. Is there a system of domesticated animals that continue to regularly reproduce enough offspring, or are more and more wild animals domesticated frequently? I don’t understand this, and it makes it hard to decide to support independent hunting in the wild that would destroy wild- life systems; or to stick to the established system- that seems to work. I think that hunting animals in the wild is okay because its seems to be done on such a small scale, but if it were to drastically increase in size, this would pose regulation problems, and wild animals might start to be seen as just food opportunities.

In reading Harrison’s “A Really Big Lunch: Annals of Eating” it was difficult for be not to judge the article’s tone and food phrases as “snobby." But I actually thought of the thirty seven course lunch as more of an art expression than gluttony. There was serious respect and rules on the line- Harrison felt that he had to finish the meal, even if he admitted that it was bad for his health. Chef Meneau had spent time and dedication into preparing such a huge project. And the twelve diners considered it one of the most memorable meals of their lives- not a common place event. “It was food with a precise and determinable history.” This cooking and tasting lifestyle is a real passion for these people; they combine culture and intellect into eating. It does seem ridiculous to me that anyone would want to eat that many courses during one meal, but it also seems ridiculous how big average American restaurant portions are at restaurants and how much food gets wasted every day.

Book recommendations about food harvesting:

Jan Olof. Pine marten population limitation: food, harvesting, or predation? Uppsalla: Swedish University of Agriculture, 1998.

Shiva, Vandana. Stolen harvest: the hijacking of the global food supply. Cambridge: South End Press, 2008.