Blessed & Grateful: A Squirrel on the Cutting Board ~ A Tale of Making Food and Family

One meal at a time, we gently pushed each other outside of our comfort zones to become family.

My husband arrived home from the woods one winter Saturday afternoon, popped his head into my office and proudly announced:

“There’s a squirrel for you on the cutting board, hon!”

“A what!?” I asked.

“A squirrel. We’re going to roast him for dinner!”

Horrified, I replied: “You can’t put that thing in the oven. I’ve got potatoes in there.”

“He won’t eat any potatoes, hon! He’s already dead!”

Anticipating a Memorable Meal

Downstairs in the kitchen, I found two excited kids: My husband and younger stepson.

They’d taken his beagle puppy to the woods for training that led to the gray squirrel’s demise. A hunk of cleaned, raw meat carefully wrapped in a plastic bag remained of the scampering, furry creature.

It was, indeed, on the cutting board. And it looked just like chicken.

Their faces beamed with broad smiles and rosy cheeks, typical after an invigorating winter walk in the woods. They had a twinkle of anticipation of the next thrill: My distress at a squirrel carcass in my kitchen and — even better — roasted squirrel on my dinner plate.

My husband threw down the gauntlet. “Are you going to try it, hon?”

Our Meat Came from the Stop ‘n Shop

They knew I would be squeamish. They are meat-and-potatoes men, who grew up hunting wild deer and turkey on ground in the woods of Pennsylvania’s Rothrock State Forest. They hunt with their father and grandfather  — as my husband did before them and his father did before him — year after year.

I grew up in a suburb outside Cleveland. Our meat had come from the Stop ‘n Shop. Squirrels were cute critters with fluffy tails that did goofy, entertaining things like chase each other up and down tree trunks. A sign that I grew up with far more luxury than I realized as a child, to eat a squirrel had never, ever crossed my mind.

Food that Lives a Full, Wild Life

Soon after meeting my husband, I realized I would have to accept hunting. I already held in high regard anyone who cultivates or harvests food from the wild so the rest of us can eat. As a cub newspaper reporter on the coast of Maine, I’d written many stories about small-scale commercial fishermen and found them, by and large, to be good, hard-working salt-of-the-earth people.

This is now my third decade of writing about environmental responsibility and the food supply, particularly seafood on a global scale. So I’ve thought a lot about these thorny, complicated issues. It’s more environmentally responsible, I believe, to know where your food comes from — to know what it takes to grow it, even to meet it face-to-face — than to buy it in sanitized plastic at the grocery store.

(We do plenty of that, too.)

We are not purists. I am aware that the planet would be better off if the U.S. diet shifted away from meat to insects or plants. True.

That’s a pretty tough sell in this family of meat-eaters. So the more of our meat that comes from the wild, the better for us and the planet.

A Swift End

Until it meets the bullet or arrowhead, that wild deer or turkey lived its full wild life as it was meant to until, hopefully, the quick end of that life. While life and nature are messy and death does not come instantly, the goal of the hunters I know is for the end to be quick and free of suffering.

I am not there to witness it, so trust them that this is so. We’ve talked about it. For me, the killing holds no appeal. When the meat comes home, I cook it with a clear conscience, and proudly serve venison or a wild turkey on Thanksgiving.

It is food every bit as beautiful and healthful as those heirloom tomatoes from my organic garden, local greens from the farmers market or fresh boutique oysters on the half-shell.

Facing the Ick Factor

But squirrel?

Never. Not in my repertoire. Nor was I even a bit tempted to cook or eat it.

Yet, I already knew — as did my gloating husband — that I’d have to try it.

My husband and the boys had themselves squirmed many times as they peeked in the pots simmering on the stove or spotted something new on their dinner plates.

“What’s that?”

“Oh,” I’d say. “I’m trying a new recipe. I thought you’d like it because I know you like clams” or “that noodle thing we had last week” or what-have-you.

“I’ll try it. I just want to know what it is.”

Food: One Way to their Hearts

By the time that hunk of squirrel appeared in our kitchen, in this small Pennsylvania farm town, I had taken over cooking for the four of us. The boys were already teenagers — 15 and 13 — when dad’s new girlfriend arrived in their lives and home, a foodie with a several towering piles of cookbooks.

I instantly loved them and felt a fierce drive to nurture and protect them.

They are my kids, yet I am not their mom. I had to respect her place and find a place of my own. They were too big to rock to sleep or listen to a bedtime story or be tucked in.

But I could feed them. Oh my yes, I could feed them. Doing so became somewhat of an obsession.

Filling, Fast and Familiar

With fresh eyes, I thumbed my dog-eared cookbooks. Our first regular meal together on Sunday mornings was Dorie Greenspan’s recipe for buttermilk pancakes — plus a banana.

The banana caramelized as the batter hit the foaming butter on the griddle. Tangy buttermilk lifted the cakes as they cooked, filling the kitchen with warmth and sweetness. Teenage boys, I quickly learned, not only have ravenous appetites, but turn everything into a competition, including how many pancakes they can eat. Soon, I was making two batches for the four of us.

All those years interviewing chefs and writing about food trends would prove both a secret weapon — and liability.

Flavor, nuance, names of famous chefs, the best brand of white chocolate … no one really cared. None of that was important to hungry, growing boys who were year-round athletes and hunters.

What they wanted most was filling, familiar and fast, because they were always hungry. Here in our farm town with its churches, traditions, Amish culture and single pizza joint, all of that foodie stuff just made me sound like a snob.

Simple Food — with Extra Meat

Chili quickly made the cut — especially made with venison — along with paninis and tomato soup. I leaned on Sara Moulton, queen of the family-friendly weeknight meal, especially chicken thighs with sausage and hot peppers over pasta. I kept the pickled okra in her Cheatin’ Jambalaya but added extra meat and used brown rice. We all swooned for Sara’s beer-battered fish tacos.

I deleted from my shopping list, pantry and menus as much processed food as I could get away with, and added green vegetables. We ate a lot of broccoli. I didn’t care that it was smothered with cheese. If I put out a platter of veggies and ranch dressing while I was furiously finishing dinner, the vegetables disappeared. Magic.

I learned to keep it simple.

My Moosewood books with their vegetarian classics collected dust, as did anything fancy or too time-consuming — unless it was a holiday or Sunday or someone’s birthday, when I made a favorite chocolate cake or peanut butter pie.

And so it went. Meal by meal, I’d serve dishes outside their familiar — just not too far — and invite their honest response until we built a stable of family favorites.

Until, that is, we built a family that included me.

Upside Down

On the steamy summer night when we told the boys we were going to get married — quite a big night, really, as we were asking for their blessing — I made rigatoni with sliced sweet peppers and flank steak their dad grilled. The boys were OK with the news. Our younger son, with a twinkle in his eye that always just knocks me over, said “just keep the food coming.”

And so my husband and I cooked the same dish for the guests at our wedding picnic a few weeks later.

I transformed their family meals. They turned my life upside down in the best possible way.

Foodie Bliss on a Winter Afternoon

One January Saturday, in that quiet lull following the holidays, our calendar was empty and I had what seemed like plenty of alone time to try Sheila Lukins’ strawberry tart and a chicken pot pie from the new Ina Garten Barefoot Contessa cookbook I’d received for Christmas.

Aahhh, cooking bliss. As the snow gently fell outside our kitchen window, I mixed dough and custard and listened to the MET opera broadcast.

Then I flaked, and mistakenly added the entire batch of fresh crème fraiche to the custard instead of the much smaller amount the tart recipe called for, which made it a watery mess. The chicken mixture for the pot pies took forever to thicken. I burned too much time searching the deep storage spots high and low for the ramekins that had belonged to my dad.

Soon, the boys would be home and starving. Evening plans had taken shape. Deadlines approached.

Then Kitchen Chaos

A glass lid slipped from my hands and shattered on the kitchen floor. I’d forgotten to thaw the puff pastry and considered pulling out the hair-dryer to makeup time, then thought better of it.

Hungry people floated in and out of the kitchen. Pacing. Circling.

Now in a panic, I pressed on with my pot pies.

“Is dinner ready?” asked my older stepson, home from college. He asked again, and again, until I cracked.

Calmly and slowly, I walked over to him, planted at the kitchen table. I told him I loved him with all my heart and that he would know dinner was done when it was on the plate in front of him.

So, until that moment, if he could please — PLEASE! — for the love of God, stop asking!

He moved on to reminiscing.

“You know, we always tried everything you put in front of us,” he said.

Crispy, Cracked & Still Sizzling

A few weeks later, that squirrel was in front of me. Our older son was back at college, yet I could still hear his words.

My husband put the squirrel in a metal pan to roast, not a bit of oil or seasoning on it. By then I knew wild game typically has less fat and dries out easily. Really, the poor thing died twice.

We sat down to dinner: chicken, potatoes, probably broccoli — and squirrel, the meat cracked and still sizzling.

I took a bite. Awful. Stringy and dry.

But I had tried it — as they watched.

Soul Food

Our boys are now accomplished men with full, juicy lives of their own, busily balancing long-term girlfriends, work commitments — and many meals with extended families including their girlfriends’ families. With them away at college most of the last year, my husband and I settled into empty-nesting with simple dinners of salads, sandwiches or, my favorite, eggs. One or two cooked meals can last us all week.

Even when our sons are home for holiday and summer vacations, we are all so busy that it’s easy to put off grocery shopping and cooking a proper, family meal.

But I can’t let that happen.

Once a week, I pick a day that looks best for everyone and cook a full family meal.

For when the six of us sit down to share a meal, what is satisfied much more than my physical hunger is my soul’s deep craving for this family to nurture and share.

~ Lisa Duchene

Lisa Duchene is a freelance business-environment writer, essayist, blogger, owner of Polished Oak Communications and — above all else — a proud stepmama in central Pennsylvania.

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