cellini's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Meat, Meat, Meat Someone wrote me a note on Diaryland asking if it was fun butchering the deer. No, it really was not. It was educational. It was 'character-building.' By no means was it fun. It was gross and tedious and time-consuming. It was hard work. Not fun by any means. The grossness actually did wear off. After a while I just got used to it and came fully to terms with what it all was. At that point I no longer had any problem just grabbing whatever part I needed to with my bare hands. I would rather not do this again. The next deer that I shoot will probably be taken to a professional butcher. Then all I have to do it gut it. Gutting it was the 'grossest' part but it was much less work than the butchering. It was also interesting to get the anatomy lesson that I did in the process. The rumen is HUGE. It takes up, like, half the body cavity. I also got to see some of the contents of the stomach, which was educational. It confirmed my fears about the current situation with the deer around here, which is that they are on the edge of starving. Right now they should be gorging themselves on acorns. But the drought resulted in a very small acorn crop. Probably less than 5% of what was in this deer's stomach was acorns. The rest was grass and other green browse, which is sort of like salad for a deer versus acorns, which are more like meat or potatoes. Or tofu, if you prefer to look at it that way. The rumen was huge and so was the liver. I was amazed at the size of the liver. I don't understand why a deer needs a liver that big. The liver appears to have a huge blood supply. Whereas the kidneys are surprisingly small, as is the bladder. The amateur naturalist in me is rather pleased to have a better idea of how a deer is put together. Or rather taken apart. Just while typing this I finished eating some really, amazingly wonderful medallions of venison. This was a cut that was very pale in color. You would look at it and think it was pork. But it was incredibly tender and juicy and flavorful. The funny thing is that it was intended as dog food. After I carved out a bunch of roasts and the brisket and tenderloins, I took all of the random little bits of meat that I couldn't identify and cut them out into a big bowl for dog food. I didn't worry about getting hair on this stuff or whatever because the dogs were the ones who were going to be eating it and they don't give a shit. So I put about 5 pounds of those pieces in the bowl and left it in the fridge until an hour ago. Then I spread them out on a cookie sheet and stuck them in the oven at 350 degrees for 20 minutes. I did 2 batches of this and put the results away in a huge tupperware container. But there was this one big, long cut that I started to slice up after it came out of the oven and the pieces looked like something from a 4 star restaraunt. Curious, I tasted one and it was fucking fantastic. So I sliced off a serving's worth for myself and finished making the dog food. Then I sat down here and ate the venison and it was so fucking good but now I'm kind of bummed because I have absolutely no clue what cut of meat it was. I have no way of ever reproducing this. Meat, meat, meat. This is a hell of a lot of meat. If I had bought this much meat at the grocery store it would probably cost me at least $200. Score! Free groceries! I think next week I'm going to have to take some time off from meat. Go vegetarian for a bit. I do that sometimes. 9:22 p.m. - 2007-10-20 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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