Wild Turkey Surprise

Do you need the recipe for Baked Seal Flippers? 

Or have a hankering for Smothered Muskrat and Onions?  Squirrel Fricassee?  

I have the recipe!

I picked up this fascinating cookbook up in my local Goodwill a few weeks ago:

First released in 1967, it is billed as the authoritative guide to one of the world's richest storehouses of good things to eat - the Canadian North.  In it are straightforward, step-by-step instructions for hunting, field dressing, skinning, plucking, and cutting big game, small game, or game birds, plus scores of delicious recipes to try once you haul it all back home; everything from bear steaks to sweet pickled beaver.  It also has jam and jelly recipes for just about every berry you've never heard of - mossberry, thimbleberry, bilberry and bearberry to name a few, pointers from pioneers and a special section on "Arctic Gourmet" fare.

One interesting fact:  According to this guide no poisonous plants, berries or mushrooms have been reported from north of the tree-line, and old-timers will insist that nothing poisonous grows in the Northwest Territories.

I found this book right around the time I listened to author Hal Herzog discuss his new book 'Some We Love, Some We Hate, Some We Eat' on Coast to Coast, a late-night radio program we regularly download to our ipods. Over the course of time humans sure have developed some pretty complex relationships with animals.  We fall in love with some, hate/fear others and a select few we eat.  I know that I certainly have struggled with the fact that we eat animals and have gone through periods where I was either a vegan or a vegetarian at different times in my life. 

 However, if I were desperately scrounging up my next meal in the frozen north, I don't think I'd turn my nose up at "Squirrel en Casserole With Biscuit Topping" In fact, it sounds positively delightful!

For your amusement I have posted a few of the recipes below. (click on each)      
Bon Appetit!

awww!