Makes Me Gag.

April 1st, 2017.

Today my friend posted on FB that her Mother had fed her and their family squirrels when they were kids.  Awkward pause.

Iiiii know.  
She's a really cool woman and basically unflappable but even she was pretty surprised when her Mom told her.

I had to laff when one of her childhood friends commented that she'd eaten at her house as a kid and ... kinda wondered?!

Then I thought, well, we were poor when I was growing up and my oh-so-thrifty Grandmother 'Nan' used to force us to eat feed us rabbit pie. She'd survived two World Wars and The Great Depression and she had 75 cans of condensed soup in her kitchen cupboards when she died suddenly on her toilet in 1973.  But that's another blog. 

Let me know if you wanna hear about Nan, she was a TRIP.

Now I'm getting off track, I apologize.  I'm just saying, you get thrifty when you have to survive all that awful crap.  Anyway, my younger sister and I would slog to Nan's from school in the freezing English bitter cold rain in our sagging navy blue knee high socks and our little navy blue too-small school uniforms and enter Nan's equally freezing bungalow.  And if it smelled like rabbit pie, I would start to gag.  Like, back up and gag in the meticulously-manicured shrubbery (that Nan groomed with kitchen shears with her 1950s dress and an apron she made herself, Bless Her Heart). 
I would feel the retch comin' on because I knew Nan would make us sit politely and respectfully at the table like Victorian children with her strictly enforced impeccible table manners until we ate all that nasty pie. Which probably wasn't rabbit, it was more like wild hare because it was really inexpensive.  It was a nightmare, people. I can barely look a rabbit or a hare in the eye now.  

I knowwww, rabbits are delicious and healthy but because of my PTSD caused by my Nan who boiled the HELL out of everything, it's kinda like eating a squirrel to me. Thank you, Nan.  Great childhood memories.  Martha Stewart would twirl this into a poetic blog and make it sound super nostalgic and romantic and add on a fudge recipe or instructions on making a wreath out of dried sheep intestines and flip flops or some other b.s. but I'm tellin' ya, my Grandmother could not cook and .... gaaag ... 

A few years ago a friend of ours struck up a conversation about pheasants.  I lovvvve pheasants.  He seemed to be really into the whole pheasant thing too.  They are everything that's cool: bright, regal, colorful.  And they're so darned British.  You see 'em everywhere in the English countryside.  They make me smile.

I told our friend I really wanted to purchase several to release on the farm.  He said he could hook me up with some pheasants.   
I think this is where it all went horribly wrong.  Apparently (it occurred to me later), he thought I wanted to let them go, shoot them and eat them.  I just wanted to watch them parading across the front lawn, hanging out in the fields and strutting atop the stone walls doing their pheasanty thing and being all pastoral and ... well, being cool.  

Then our friend invited us over for dinner.  
The minute we walked in the door I knew.  
It was pheasant pie.

So, not being a lover of game, I felt the gag coming on.  Which was a really really big problem.  Because it was February and really icy outside and I had elected to go without crutches for the first time in 5 months (avoiding doctor's advice) and I hadn't noticed any shrubbery by the front door.  So, if this ever happens to you, let me inform you, you CANNOT HIDE the damn pie under the potatoes, the fork, or the Spider plant behind you and I inform you of this because I tried.  Since I'd raved on and on about how much I love pheasants, they doled out an extra large piece for me.  I felt terribly misunderstood and my whole head went red and I swear it nearly exploded.  After our host and hostess casually announced they didn't have enough pheasants in their freezer, they'd called a friend for more as he was cleaning out his freezer and had found some in the bottom of it.  
Oh Gawd, I needed those crutches.
And a nice forgiving shrub.

Somehow I got through it, apologized for not having much of an appetite and we had an appertif and started to leave with our host and hostess waving a merry goodbye in their cozy, warm, well-lit doorway. We were about halfway down the long sloping icy path to the car and ... they suddenly shut out the light.  
No.Crutches.  No.Light.  No.Pie.  
And I'd had two cocktails.  

So we did what all sane people do.
We burst out laffing and slid to our frozen car.




#rabbitpie, #grandmascooking, #pheasantpie, #travelswithagreatdanedog, #gagginginthebushes