I recently had a talk with my boyfriend about the possibility of raising meat rabbits. He seemed to take it in stride with all the other off-the-wall ideas I have on a daily basis. My boyfriend has spent his college years eating a lot of prepared foods, and like most Americans, doesn't often think about where his food comes from or how it was produced. I don't blame him for it, because that's how most Americans are raised (including myself). It wasn't until my college years that I really started giving a hoot about this stuff.
I told my boyfriend that I was going to buy a butchered rabbit from a local grocery store so we could see how it tastes. There's no point raising meat rabbits if we don't like how they taste! He was fine with the idea of eating grocery store rabbit. But then I asked him if he would eat rabbit grown in our own backyard, he said he would be weirded out by it and that he wouldn't want to eat animals that he knew. This response threw me for a loop!
Whether you buy nameless/faceless meat at the grocery store, or slaughter and butcher your own animal, you are casting the same vote. Either way, an animal is being slaughtered! And wouldn't you rather know that the animal had a happy life, was raised in a spacious and clean home, and was slaughtered in a stress-free environment?
I like your idea - try a lot of different meats and it can be cooked into the same things you usually find at the grocery store. Something I learned, ALWAYS clean blood off wild game; marinate overnight if you don't like the gamey taste; and cook your game to "rare" compared to how you'd cook beef or it'll be dry/overcooked. If you want to check out a Chinese food recipe I made using elk instead of chicken, go to my blog. Re: raising your own food in the backyard. It would be good to find out now that your bf thinks of animals as pets, not food!
ReplyDeleteFound you on the Barn Hop.
ReplyDeleteOn raising your own food, I'd offer this: There's a difference between pets we love and animals that will become food. Don't name any animal you plan on eating. It's easier to eat chicken, cow, & pig than it is to eat Tilly, Bessy, and BillyBob.
You should also give some thought to whether you can actually take the life of an animal you've come to know vs. whether you can afford to send it in to be butchered elsewhere. Taking my dog in to be put down was hard enough. I don't know if I could bring myself to snap the neck of a rabbit or take a knife to a live chicken's throat.
It sounds brutal but it's reality. It's important to not romanticize the idea of raising your own meat.
Either way - try the rabbit for sure - you'll love it!
I think I'll be able to handle slaughtering an animal (hopefully).
ReplyDeleteI did plenty of animal dissections during my Bachelor's degree in biology. I've also collected museum specimens (which involved euthanizing the specimens in the field). And I've also done a bit of taxidermy at a museum I used to work at. I'm used to blood and guts, so hopefully I'll be able to do the slaughtering just fine.
As a child my dad raised and butchered beef, sheep, goats, chickens, rabbits and we butchered them all. We hunted fished and enjoyed the outdoors we killed and ate what we harvested. I have no problem at all with it my 16 year old daughter does have a problem she won't let me shoot any female deer or elk and I am good with that.
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