This was an audio read, which means I "read" it in 10 or at the most 25 minute snatches while driving or washing dishes. Audio reading is really good for me because I've already mentioned my diabolical habit of skimming, which means I miss a lot of stuff - especially descriptive stuff that is actually quite poetical and charming.
Here's a description of the book from Amazon: "What happens when a classically-trained New York chef and fearless omnivore heads out of the city and into the wild to track down the ingredients for her meals? After abandoning Wall Street to embrace her lifelong love of cooking, Georgia Pellegrini comes face to face with her first kill. From honoring that first turkey to realizing that the only way we truly know where our meat comes from is if we hunt it ourselves, Pellegrini embarks on a wild ride into the real world of local, organic, and sustainable food."
This seems to be an honest account of her different hunting adventures across the country, in Arkansas, Texas, Wyoming, Louisiana, upstate New York, and even and old English style hunt in the UK. This was pretty entertaining. I love her declaration about the surprising good manners and intelligence of people who have been labelled back woods rednecks by the cloistered liberals in the city. This resonates with current political happenings and the realization of the media and much of the country about the disconnect between rural and urban folks that has happened - rabbit trail!!! No pun intended. She prefers squirrels.
I have pondered my own disconnect between the flesh that I eat and its once living state. I did help butcher some turkeys this year - an experience which I embraced, like Georgia, as an opportunity to encounter my food at a more honest level. I held the wriggling turkey in a bucket whilst its owner sliced its jugular (or the equivalent) in a humane fashion. I watched its blood drain out and was pleasantly surprised to see that there didn't seem to be distress. I reached my hand into its cavity and use my fingers to separate its innards from the frame and then pulled them out in one clean sweep. Enough description for now.
So, I can appreciate her pilgrimage towards what does it really mean to be an omnivore. I have contemplated vegetarianism. I have seen death, but rarely. I have watched the light go out of a coyote's eyes and felt the strange mystical power of the transition from life to death. I have lamented my lack of awareness and appreciation for the life that has become my food and how easy it is for me to acquire it. I also know that I consciously choose to eat meat because I believe that humans were designed to eat meat and that my own body needs the iron and nutrition it provides.
This book has philosophy but it's not a treatise. It's a play by play of her experiences capturing food. It felt oddly like reading poetry because of her fresh portrayals of people, places, and things, that really pulled me into the moment - the sights and sounds of the early morning hunt - the jocular hunting guide "the commish" - who I feel like is someone I met in my childhood, and the luscious descriptions of how the prey became a tasty main dish.
I feel that I have always looked down on hunters a bit. I have always felt like hunting is valid only if people couldn't otherwise procure meat. The idea of capturing a lovely graceful deer just for sport seemed villainous, especially considering high powered rifles and modern technology - so unsporting and relatively easy - like when everyone on your soccer team gets a trophy when you're nine, or when it's your turn to be student of the month. I guess this book made me ponder my posture a bit. Perhaps there is something to be said for keeping alive a dormant part of ourselves which helps define what it means to be human. Perhaps there is something in the process of stalking, killing, preparing, and devouring food that gets us in touch with a more authentic version of ourselves. Plus, apparently wild pigs are overtaking the west. Stalk on.
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