Squirrel Stew (also known as Brunswick Stew)

You're going to want to start this recipe really early in the morning because it will take approximately nine hours to make, most of that simmering on the stove. The squirrel can be frozen. I had harvested the squirrels I used to make this a couple months prior and they were stored in freezer bags in the freezer. See youtube on how to field dress a squirrel (not kidding, that's how I learned!)

• Five squirrels, skinned, field dressed and quartered
• 2 qts chicken stock
• water
• 4 T. salt
• 4 tsp black pepper
• 2 tsp cayenne pepper

• 2 medium sized onions
• 3 medium sized potatoes
• 1 can corn
• 2 c. frozen or fresh lima beans
• 2 c. frozen or fresh okra
• 3-4 carrots
• 3-4 celery stalks
• 5 c. cherry/porter tomatoes

In a very large pot, first put squirrel meat in the broth adding enough water to cover the meat. Add salt, black pepper and cayenne pepper. Bring to a boil and then reduce heat so it is lightly boiling. Cook meat for about three to four hours, adding water as needed, until the meat falls off the bones.

Using a slotted spoon, remove meat from stock. Add vegetables to stock, all of them should be well diced. You can use any vegetable really, but NOT rice. Rice is never used in Brunswick stew.

Next, remove meat from bones (this can take a while) and then add meat back into pot. Add more salt to taste. Let simmer/lighthly boil, stirring fairly often (it will stick to the bottom of the pot) until vegetables are reduced to mush. Add water as needed. You can make this the day before you need it and reheat it on the stove.

This recipe is really, really good and based on one from a late 19th century cookbook. My husband does not like fried squirrel, but he did love this stew. The long cook time takes a lot of the gaminess out of meat. You might use this recipe for other game meats as well.

Squirrel Lunch

I harvested my first squirrel yesterday and we fried it up today for lunch. I had never had squirrel before, but my dad and my in-laws grew up eating it. I have to say I liked it and I'll probably try to harvest another one soon. The little bastards tore up our deer feeder last year and that means we have too many running around.

Some cities also have too many running around and they won't even let the residents do anything about it. A elderly neighbor of my uncle in Austin contracted typhus, which was probably transmitted by fleas living on the squirrels that have overrun the town since it's illegal to kill them. A female squirrel can have six offspring a year, so without predators, that quickly gets out of control. You can nearly kill little old ladies but you can't have squirrel for breakfast. Makes me glad I live out in the country.

Anyway, all this squirrel hunting made me think about how things used to be and why the amount of meat they say our ancestors ate is probably a huge under-estimation. Our grandparents and their parents, unless they lived in some place like New York City, did not rely on grocery stores for food. They also did not rely on huge commercial farms that grow genetically modified crops that can withstand bad weather. Go out in the woods and tell me how much you can gather. It ain't much. You're way better off trying to hunt something than to find edible plants, at least where I live. Our ancestors may have relied on other farmers or other hunters, but most of their food was not grown far away. Most people who lived out in the country hunted whatever they could get their hands on and it was never counted by USDA morons. Nowadays you'd probably go to jail if you tried selling meat to the neighbors, but I digress.

I thoroughly suggest for all you paleo types out there to go hunt your own food if it's possible. There's nothing like being out in the woods on a lovely spring morning. I know some people live where it's not possible, and all I can say is, I feel terribly sorry for you ;)

“Any woman who does not thoroughly enjoy tramping across the country on a clear, frosty morning with a good gun and a pair of dogs does not know how to enjoy life.” ~Annie Oakley

Be eco-friendly: To hell with agriculture

I often see people who are advocating that we stop eating animal products tie that argument up into "environmentally friendly" and "sustainable" arguments. The arguments are flawed though, in so many ways.

Let's start with this, the fact that a single large ruminant will feed a single person for a while, and I mean a long while. The average weight of meat obtained from a single slaughtered cow is about 500 lbs. If you ate a pound of meat a day (which is a LOT of meat), then it would take you 500 days to eat the whole cow. That's over a year and a half of food, and it took only one cow. Say you only eat the beef for dinner, having eggs for breakfast for example, and you consume a half pound of meat, that cow will last a single person for more than three years.

One cow doesn't need very much grazing land, in good areas it's a cow per acre, unless you live in a very dry place. Not only that, but the cow doesn't till up the soil and drain it of vital nutrients. It doesn't kill countless rodents by using combine machines for harvesting (or farmers attempting to exterminate them because they damage the crops). It doesn't require pesticides that run off and destroy the water and kill fish. The argument that cows take up land that could be used to grow crops is a stupid one. Yes, let's tear down all those trees and till up all the grass so you can eat soybean oil.

If we take into account, that if you eat a primarily meat based diet, like the Inuit, you have no need of vegetables, fruit or grains, then you will by extension use less resources and less land than if you eat the standard American diet, or even a vegetarian or vegan diet. It is no accident that people who eat Atkins say that they consume less food. They do consume less food, because their body is getting everything it needs from the small amount of food they're eating. You cannot consume enough grain to get all of the essential amino and fatty acids that you need. But a single 6oz steak with fat on it has almost everything your body needs to function. We evolved to eat meat primarily. Our brains developed into what they are because of saturated animal fat. Your metabolism doesn't give one iota about your "ethics".

If you eat a vegetarian or vegan diet, you are forced to eat a wide variety of food to try to obtain all of the nutrients necessary for you body to function, and even then most who try such diets are forced to take supplements or they get very sick. Even some who take supplements cannot remain on such diets because it damages their health. Look at Gwyneth Paltrow. She's in her 40s and has osteopenia probably because she was a vegan.

Another thing is, I'm sure most vegetarians and vegans try to buy their food locally (or say they would like to), but depending on where you live, this could be impossible for most of the year. You're not going to find fresh fruits and vegetables in the middle of winter in most parts of the country. This therefore requires the shipping long distances of food (and vitamin supplements LOL). This is not a sustainable model for the environment. Do you know how much diesel a single tractor-trailer truck uses to travel across the country? I used to drive one, and for 600 miles of driving I would go through about a hundred(!) gallons of diesel. That's one truck. Not to mention jet fuel usage for fruits and vegetables that come from outside the country because it's too cold to grow them here in the winter.

So, how much land would it take to feed someone a vegan diet for a year and a half? The argument is, not very much. And that may be true. IF you lived out in the country, in a hospitable environment, and could grow your own food, it wouldn't take a lot of land to feed one person. Of course, you've got to get your vitamin supplements from somewhere >_<

You would also have to hope that the crops did good every year, and unless you're using pesticides, they may not do very well, and you would have to can enough of your crop for the winter. One bad year though, with floods, or bugs that eat all your plants, or no rain, and you'd better pray there's a grocery store nearby. Is this model applicable to most of the people in this country? Not no, but hell no. Most of the people who advocate eating vegetarian or vegan live in cities. Where the hell are they going to grow crops, on 5th Avenue? I mean, seriously?

We eat primarily venison, nearly every day for dinner, and even here in the Texas Hill Country, where the deer are small (about 38 lbs of meat on a doe after butchering), three adult does will typically last four adults for the entire year, and then some. And guess what, no fuel was consumed by any tractor-trailer to bring that food to us. We got it from our backyard. And that's another thing that pisses me off, though it is perhaps tangential to this argument, and that is that city-dwellers are somehow more "green" friendly than we are. Whatever someone in the city eats, whether it be meat or veggies, it has to be trucked in.

I insist that agriculture is the single worst thing that has ever happened to this planet. It allows for an artificially induced increase in population to a point that is unsustainable. From a historical point of view, it brought about patriarchy, but that's an entire other post all together. Eventually when crops no longer flourish because the soil has been over-used, there are famines. In addition to this, advocating commercial agriculture to feed everyone is supporting Corporations like Monsanto, whether you realize it or not. Monsanto loves vegans, they want all of us to be vegan so we'll buy their soybean derived products.

So, you want to be vegan? More power to you. Go for it. But here's a suggestion. Shut the hell up about it. It's not eco-friendly by default. It's not "the only way." It's not even a good way in my opinion. But it's a free country and if you want to do it, feel free. When you wreck your health, don't whine to me about it. I don't want to hear it. I'll probably just say I told you so. And don't tell me what to eat, and don't bother posting links to slaughterhouses run by some bad apples. I hate commercial farming, so of course I hate commercial cattle raising. That is not where most of my meat comes from, so you want something done about it? Write your congressman. I'm not an elected official and can't do squat about it. I don't come to your blog and tell you that paleo is more eco-friendly. That would be a waste of my time, because you're so caught up in yourself that you wouldn't consider it. I kill my own deer and know what it looks like to butcher one. Do you know where your food comes from? Unless you're hunting, buying from a farm down the street, or growing your own, Monsanto or some other Corporation is probably providing your food.

Angry at what I've written? Don't choke on your soybean oil.

The Ancient Paleolithic Diet

One argument used by people who are against low carb diets is that our paleolithic ancestors ate mostly fruit and vegetables. The argument is absurd of course. How did paleolithic people get fruit and vegetables in the middle of winter? They didn't have refrigeration or greenhouses or delivery trucks. This means that in most parts of the globe, Paleolithic people would have had to have hunted for meat, or they would have starved to death.

This means that they ate meat primarily most of the year, and in some places, as with the Inuit, they ate meat pretty much all year. And they were excellent hunters. Most of what we know about paleolithic people is derived in one of two ways. The first is by archaeology, where the remains that are dug up are studied. The second is by anthropology, where we study people who survived into the 20th century as hunter-gatherers.

A lot of what is found at dig sites from the Paleolithic is weapons, for example stone spear heads. They made lots of spears, both wooden and stone, although the wooden parts don't usually survive. Both homosapiens and neanderthalensis used spears to hunt medium and large sized mammals.

Atlatls were used as a means of extending a spear's throwing range and increasing the amount of force behind the throw. Atlatls have been used for probably 400,000 years, and would have allowed even a child to bring down large game.

Research at a site in Russia shows that ancient people could easily have hunted very big game like mammoths.

"Ethnographic sources and experimental work confirm that recent African elephants can be killed with spears or projectile points. According to Trilles (1932), Forest People from Gabon hunted elephants by sneaking under a standing elephant and thrusting a spear into its belly; the elephant could also be killed by arrows... According to Janmart (1952), the Ituri hunted elephants by creeping under an elephant and plunging a spear into its belly. The Ogiek people from Kenya hunted with dogs and used spears to kill elephants... Frison (1989) showed experimentally that Clovis projectile points used with atlatl and darts or thrusting spears can penetrate the thick hide of African elephants and inflect lethal wounds on elephants of all ages and both sexes. The hunting strategy should include several persons.

Comparison of the size of recent African elephants and mammoths shows that it is plausible that prehistoric hunters used the same techniques for hunting mammoths as recent hunter use to kill elephants."

So much for a lack of food. A large animal like a mammoth would feed a lot of people for a long while. Even smaller animals like deer or elk would feed a good number of people. In the winter, the meat would have lasted for a while, in areas where the temperature was cold enough to inhibit decay. And unlike fruit and vegetables, when the meat was gone, they could go and hunt some more.

Evolution has not had time to alter our genes to adapt to an agricultural life style. It has especially not had time to alter them to deal with the massive increase in sugar consumption that has happened since the early 1980s.