"Choose rabbits with soft ears and paws"
Category: Food... Just Plain Silly...
Posted Thursday, July 24, 2008 at 06:24 AM [GMT-6]

The Gazette is taking a break for a few days...or not. We'll see how it goes...or doesn't.

One of the artifacts I uncovered during my most recent archaeological dig (that's what I'm now calling the process of unpacking the final boxes from our move, because it's more accurate than you might think) was this little booklet, probably given to us as a wedding gift:

Sure, it's a generic title, but what do you expect for 35¢? And it is accurate, if not winsome.

The book is from those days long past, when cigarette companies advertised in bicycling magazines ("Nothing refreshes your century ride sag stop like a menthol Kool!") and beer came in cans that required pointy devices to open. The only color photos in the book are the covers, and I gotta tell you that cheaply-reproduced 1970s black-and-white photography is not really the optimal method for enhancing the appeal of food.

Anyway, this 48-page masterpiece tells you everything you'll ever want to know about cooking meat and meat-like substances (there's a section devoted to such delicacies as "Breaded Brains," "Heart Goulash," and "Tripe Patties").

It even has a section on preparing wild game. The title for this post comes the instructions on how "To Dress And Truss Rabbits," which precede a recipe for "Hassenpfeffer," otherwise known as "Sweet-Sour Rabbit." But it invites you to think even bigger when it comes to game, as you can choose among recipes for "Reindeer Pot Roast" and "Braised Moose" (the latter was a newlywed staple for those of us on limited college-student budgets; we'd all pitch in for a side of moose from the College Station Skaggs-Albertsons, freshly harvested from the Brazos River bottom, and gnaw on it for weeks).

Here's another handy tip, guaranteed to drive your friendly local nutritionist into hysterics: Rolled veal roast is delicious when larded with salt pork. Veal roasts not larded may be topped with bacon slices before roasting. That crackling sound you hear is the blood congealing in your arteries from simply reading those words.

And, finally, two words that will strike fear into any pre-teen child's soul: liver dumplings.