Little Bunny Foo Foo

Generally, when people ignore their blogs or their journals for more than a year, they have a whole post about how they're back and what they learned. But I hate those posts. So if you're reading this, you're stuck with just a few sentences. I'm hoping to keep this thing updated at least once a week for at least three months.

Lately, Judson and I have been doing most of our shopping at the Farmer's Market. This week, our final Wegmans grocery list was: cereal, sandwich bread, bok choy, spinach. I think this is the best we've done so far. I had a great time visiting my parents, and we were able to serve them an entire meal made from local ingredients (excluding condiments and butter). We had sirloin steaks with garlic mashed potatoes and sugar snap peas. And it was a hit!

This week, I made the mistake of noting (loudly) that the Sheep people had rabbits. For eating. The sales woman, who I think had been hoping to convince my mom to buy the Folie Bergere cheese, immediately pounced. And soon enough, we paid just over $20 for a 2.4-lb rabbit. I was immensely relieved when I took possession of the rabbit because 1) it was headless and 2) it had been skinned.

I've eaten a number of odd animals, but I don't think I'd ever had rabbit. And because Judson gets a bit squeamish when it comes to butchering meats, all the scary tasks (i.e. cutting up the rabbit) fell to me. I don't mind this, but from Saturday morning when we bought the rabbit until Monday evening when I ate it, I was apprehensive about the experience. And I couldn't get "Little Bunny Foo Foo," out of my head; this I found equally worrisome.

Interesting note about me: I can't handle "dissections" for science class, but I have no problem cutting up animals for eating, even when they have distinct muscle groups and organs.

After work, I got out my Pepin guide (because its description was shorter than the one in Peterson) and started carving. The legs were easy to separate. Then I was stuck with the ribcage/breast meat and the saddle/loin. I think Pepin wanted me to cook spinal cord and backbone, but I am not there yet. So I actually separated everything out. I ended up with about 10 pieces of rabbit--nice legs and arms, good (professional-looking!) loin cuts, etc. I lightly floured the pieces. I also threw out the kidneys, heart, and liver because my waving them around and poking at them seemed to make Judson a little green. The rabbit's kidneys were larger than its heart. I wonder if people are like that.

Anyhow, we braised the rabbit and served it with leftover mashed potatoes (which we baked in ramekins) and a mizuna (which I think is wild arugula) salad. It was tasty.

So what does rabbit taste like?

Delicious. Like rabbit. But since that's not very helpful, I would say very much like what it would taste like to blend turkey breast meat (off a real turkey that has been roasted) with chicken thigh meat.

And it's a good thing we liked it, since tomorrow, we finish off the rabbit with some homemade fresh pasta and mushrooms.