How To Eat An Animal, Part II

To return to the issue at hand.

The animal is dead. You have killed, and forces of economy staining your manicured hands or forces of saltpeter and nitrate bruising your shoulder, it doesn't matter. The animal is dead and it's your fault irreversibly. The cut of the animal is a blade roast, and the animal is an elk.

A quick note, shoot a cow elk, preferably small, the meat tastes better than the huge majestic bull, though the trophy is more profound and so subtle as to impress no one. No one displays good taste on the wall of their den, but there are many men, and women, who have enormous racks (antlers) of killed beings festooning their enclaves. The statement, subtle as vodka vomit on the stairs, this makes about the man or woman's self image is so obvious that I won't even waste my time.

Take an onion, I prefer it to be yellow. It should not be plunder of another mindless trip to the grocer, but an example of the bounty of the good, red earth. My onion comes from the quaternary deposits, prepared with work and sweat, behind my mother's house. Discard the husk and first two layers of the onion. Cut it into quarters and then eighth's, the onion, if it is from dirt you have touched, is strong and full of fiery flavor. Onions are beautiful.

Select four or five potatoes. Pick the red potatoes. They are the sweetest. As you wash the good, red earth from the potatoes, reflect on how much love a person must have to take time out of her schedule to provide her family with such bounty. I like to cut them in quarters if they are of a normal size. If they are the enormous monsters sold in a grocery store, they should be cut smaller. The potato should be a bite, all by itself independent of the powerful punch of flavor in the elk.

Four turnips, planted in the dark of the moon, and make sure they are too small for bitterness to have taken them into its grasp. As you skin them, remember the man, the friend who taught you that small turnips are best and that they should only be planted in the void between the wax and wane of our lunar friend. Miss him, as he is dead.

Slice celery into four inch segments. It is good and flavorful.

Take a cutting board and coat it in black pepper and a small touch of cumin. Hold the blade roast in your hand, feeling the coolness. Reflect on how much that trip out to the Northern, rough country means to you. Roll it into the pepper and cumin, careful to grind it in with your own hand. Rub in a good amount of minced garlic, game meat tastes best without lame spice-in-can, but with robust flavors. Savor in the world of memory the experience of dragging the heavy beast four miles to the road. It was a good day. Exhausting, but full of laughing. And snow. Heavy, heavy snow that added another ounce of misery to extracting the 600 pounds of meat from the lap of the Earth. Remember your father's hopeful and infuriating comment, "Well, this snow'll sure make good ice tea come summer."

Roast peppers in a hot oven. I prefer pablano and chile piquin, but you may use any large chile. Mine come from my sister-in-laws little slice of the ever ancient and creepy Monument Valley. Somehow the red sand and fickle creeks, combined with her ancient and equally spooky name, produce amazing chiles.

In the pot, stack onions, another bulb of garlic (skinned), the potatoes, the meat, and on top, the celery and peppers. Salt and add sprigs of fresh oregano and mint as well as a lime, quaterred.

Turn slow cooker to a medium setting and go to work.