Autumn is my favorite time of year. Add the beauty of the harvest to deep-blue skies, brilliant foliage, and crisp, cool mornings, and you have the perfect eating season. Throw open the windows, crank up the oven, throw some cinnamon about, and life is perfect. Except Sundays.
On autumnal Sundays, as I focus on the Big Dinner, I am forced into a debate with myself. Because on Sunday afternoons in the fall, I await the return of the duck hunters. My biggest fear is that they’ll come home successful.
I love ducks. I love them prepared Peking-style, brushed with sticky hoisin sauce. I love them with a tasty herbed croûte de sel. I love them slow-roasted for five hours, so the skin is crispy and the inside is moist. I eat them. I don’t shoot them. So I wrestle with myself and wonder: Am I a hypocrite? Shouldn’t I be able to embrace the hunt if I am to enjoy its spoils?
Of late, it seems important that I figure out why I can’t stomach the idea of shooting what goes into my stomach. I can’t really fault my femininity or early family structures; in fact, I consider myself to be what used to be called a tomboy. It’s more for the fact that my sister, the same one who wore prairie skirts and clogs, is a hunter—a big-time hunter. She lives in the Colorado mountains and hunts elk with her family to stock their freezer for winter. I’ve heard her stories. I’ve seen the photos. I’ve tasted her elk steaks. But I’m not a convert to the hunting lifestyle.
It’s not about being squeamish. While walking through markets all over the world, I’ve seen game displayed in ways you’d never find in a local supermarket; and yet my stomach turns only in hunger. Naked hares hanging at La Boqueria in Barcelona made me think of a nice thyme butter sauce. Watching an old woman pluck swimming fish from a bucket and chop heads to order in Hong Kong, I wondered where I could buy a cleaver like hers. At home, I see cattle in a field and think about steak. There’s nothing to be squeamish about, because I see it as food.
Animals in the market or on a farm are destined to become food; they are a product of agriculture, just as potatoes or corn grown by the same hands are. When animals are raised for food, their entire life is to that purpose. They live with human interactions and controls that create the world around them, and that is all they ever know. Not everyone will agree, but for me, it’s easier to reconcile farm-raised ducks, and foie gras, as palatable because those ducks are cared for and living the life they were meant to lead.
Many will say that I’m choosing to ignore the death that befalls my food. Actually, it’s my concern with the way farm animals are being raised and processed on mega-farms that has led me to the path of meditation on hunting. We are living in an age that offers us a wonderful opportunity to reconnect with our food. By searching out local farmers and the markets that support them, we can make choices that have a direct impact on how animals are treated. It’s getting easier and easier to walk away from big bags of frozen meat and toward a fresh meat product that was raised and processed by the guys behind the counters. I talk to them; I ask questions; I read their faces. I don’t want to ignore the animal’s sacrifice. I prefer to honor it.
It’s this real reconnection with our food that has me thinking I should walk the walk. If I really believe that we should know where our food comes from and how it’s been handled, shouldn’t I be willing to take an active role in finding that out? I have no doubt that my hunters are responsible and honorable in their actions. They don’t shoot before dawn, shoot out of season, take more than their limit, or treat the morning with anything other than reverence. They sit in the reeds and watch the sun come up, passing the coffee thermos, quietly teaching the young ones about the cormorants and kingfishers that fly quickly over the water. There have been numerous days when they haven’t fired a shot. On those days, they return full of chatter about the clouds and jumping fish and high-flying flocks that passed over.
My favorite season has always been heralded by the call of geese moving across the sky in their ever-flowing Vs. I took a big step this year and visited the land my hunters use. I stood on the marshy point of the lake where they hunker down. It was a stunningly bright day before the season began, and I tried to imagine crouching and waiting on a misty fall morning for that approaching formation. But for this season, I will again remain in my comfortable hypocrisy as an eater not a hunter. From my kitchen window, I’ll appreciate the ducks and geese in their beautiful flights, and, if my hunters are ever successful, I will celebrate their wonderful gifts at the kitchen table.
Apple Balsamic Sauce for Game Birds
1 cup balsamic vinegar
2 finely chopped garlic cloves
1 tsp freshly chopped rosemary
2 Tbsp freshly mashed apple or apple sauce
4 Tbsp chilled butter
Salt and pepper to taste
1 cup peeled, finely chopped tart apples
(Cortland is good)
Combine all ingredients in sauce pan. Over medium-high heat, bring to boil, then reduce heat and simmer for ten minutes. Pour over slices of roasted game bird.
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