Ain't you glad you weren't at coffee hour at Christ the Saviour Orthodox Church in McComb, Miss. today? Here's the e-mail I got from yesterday from my pal David Varnado, of Camp Topisaw soap fame:
Ce soir, je fais la cuisine! Boy, am I! This is a first for me. Thank God that
Edie and the girls are out of town tonight because I am roasting a BEAVER in the oven. Our oldest son's boss is also a trapper and he kindly gave him a huge
dressed beaver. I am going to try to prepare it for coffee hour at church Sunday. It is meatfare Sunday after all. It is quite disgusting. I finally figured out why. After I got it in the oven (barely! beavers are big) I realized that the kitchen smelled like I had a mess of bream on the counter. I suppose it is not that farfetched that beaver and fish should be similar because of habitat and diet. I'll be sure to let you know how it turns out.
Uh, yeah David, you be sure to do that. We had ham and cheese at our coffee hour today. Dallas is so unexotic (thank God). Then again, if I had enough sambal oelek (the Condiment of the Gods), I could eat anything. In fact, that's how I plan to get through all that tofu in my Lenten future.
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I was a sriricha devotee, and now still love it, but its sister hot sauce, sambal oelek, is now my fave rave (as they say in Tiger Beat).
"...its sister hot sauce, sambal oelek, is now my fave rave (as they say in Tiger Beat)."
I'll have to try it. I also like that Indian ketchup-type stuff, the name of which escapes me. It's like "sriracha-lite," and is great on fries, hash browns, etc.
A BEAVER???
I think I would have a coniption if my future husband ever tried that. I would alternate between jumping up and down and screaming, and running over to the oven to LOOK at the creature, which would then cause more screaming and jumping.... Wow. Definitely a good story, regardless of how it turns out. Hope the kitchen smell improves, for that poor guy's sake. ;)
Rather bizarre fact: Technically, eating a beaver is considered okay during Lent, according to the Catholic Church. It is now believed that either a.) this was developed because French fur traders had limited food choices, or b.) because someone wrote a very vague description of what a beaver was when they first wrote the Pope about whether it was okay. Nevertheless it's never been officially changed. My brother (heir to Christopher Hitchens) often brings this up as a way of mocking the Catholic Church, but maybe there's more to their position than one would think?
God bless.
Joey:
Just like capybara in South America is officially considered "fish" by the Catholic Church ...
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