Winter Nesting

I think we've skipped Fall and went straight into Winter. This could be based on the chill in the air today, or the feelings of nesting that I've been experiencing lately... It seems like the minute the rotting jack-o-lanterns are pulled from our front stoops, the Christmas lights come out - what about November???

A few weekends ago, my husband went away on a hunting trip to Valdes Island with some family friends. When he decided to take up hunting a while ago, I was skeptical but supportive, in the sense that I didn't bar the door or hide his Visa. After all, I am his wife and not his keeper - I adopted the same mindset when he decided to purchase a motorcycle a few years ago! Given the choice, I would rather that he had taken up basket-weaving or ballroom dance, but apparently my husband has a penchant for more dangerous hobbies. In his defense, his reasoning for taking up hunting was more philosophical than anything... in his words:

I read "The Omnivore's Dilemma" a couple of years later and Michael Pollon had a great chapter in the book about trying to put a meal on the table using a 'hunter - gatherer' technique. This meant that he was only going to use ingredients that he could either make or obtain for free - which included a wild pig that he shot in California. His dilemma seemed very close to mine. Since I can eat anything I want at any time - what is a good omnivore to do? I have tried the vegetarian lifestyle for short periods (maximum 2 months while travelling) and I have gone through peaks and valleys when it comes to the amount of meat that I eat in a week. But I couldn't help but feel that to make sense of what it is to eat meat I had to at least once go back, almost in time, to the basic idea of hunting and gathering. My plan was to shoot, clean, and butcher a deer which would then supplement my family's diet through the winter.

He returned from his first successful hunting trip, having shot a doe and a larger buck. A few days after his return, we all went to butcher, package and label the deer, which was a huge learning experience! Thankfully his family friends have been hunting for decades, and so I had ample cooking instructions for the many different cuts of venison. I actually wrote them all directly on the freezer paper, so will have to put them in a notebook somewhere...

I am very happy for Jason that he was able to navigate through his questions about the philosophy of meat-eating, and have to admit that a freezer stocked with close to 50lbs of organic, grassfed, free-range, happy-when-they-left-this-earth venison is quite pleasing! I thought that the meat would be quite gamey and hard to prepare, but it is actually very mild (more so than lamb) and delicious. I made a rump roast the other night that turned out fantastically, with the help of my Lee Valley digital thermometer - works perfect every time!

There is a big knitting post that I need to write, but right now Keira is asleep and Carmen is at preschool... maybe I should just go knit instead!