Posted by Sheryl Kirby in news and media, what's cooking on July 23, 2008 at 4:18 pm
Be vewwy, vewwy quiet, we're hunting wascally wabbits!
Ostensibly about wild food foraging (which is the new bandwagon for locavores who need to keep ahead of the trendy curve - supporting a farmer is sooooo last year!), Kim Honey's article this week in the Toronto Star isn't just about nibbling on some dandelions. Instead, and quite inexplicably, she decides to play whack-a-mole with a bunny under some sort of misguided idea that if you eat meat you should also have the guts to kill it. And fair enough, ideally, if not practically, all meat eaters should have to kill what they eat. But sweet merciful crap, woman, that doesn't mean going to a rabbit farm and buying a rabbit and then whacking it on the head with a stick. Learn to use a gun, then go sit in the snow for a few hours during rabbit season and EARN your rabbit and the right to kill it. And holy crap - kill it properly and humanely the first time. Dislocation of the neck is the preferred method for dressing a rabbit, because it's easier and more precise than a blow to the head - and if you use the blow to the head method, for fuck sake, get it right the first time.
The really odd part of the article is the fact that although the wild rabbit population in Toronto is quite high, it's illegal to go down to Cherry Beach and catch yourself some dinner. Likewise with the Canada geese that Honey also mentions would make a tasty meal. So the rabbit whacking was really just a horribly pimped out way to get people to read about eating weeds. And incidentally, while you can eat roadside dandelions, lamb's quarters and wild carrots, I don't know that I would in downtown Toronto. Certainly, in Parkdale, my dogs have made every good patch of edible weeds "theirs" by keeping them "well-watered". I get what Honey was trying to do, but this piece was just clueless and weird, and as so many commenters on the Star website have pointed out - creepy. Maybe this whole game of food writer one-upmanship so prevalent in the mainstream papers has just gone too far when writers are killing animals with their bare hands just to make their story edgier than the competition's.
Elsewhere in the Star, no adorable animals die in Pamela Cuthbert's article about heirloom beets; Corey Mintz's primer on dragonfruit; or Gordon Stimmell's article about red wine. Kim Honey's also got a recipe for salmon sushi - no word on whether she killed the salmon by hitting it with a stick, though. And Marion Kane recaps a 7-course meal in Quebec by Jean-Georges Vongerichten.
At the Toronto Sun, Joanne Richard has recipes that are great for camping trips (sorry, no wild rabbit dishes here), and Rita DeMontis reports that laughter burns a lot of calories (I wonder how many calories get used up whacking rabbits?), and an AP wire piece reveals the truth we all knew but would never admit to - cupcakes are really just a vehicle for what we really want; frosting, as demonstrated by the number of US cupcake shops now offering a "frosting shot". If someone had thought of that in the 1700s, it would have freed up so much cake the entire French revolution could have been avoided. Also, Elizabeth Baird has a selection of recipes for bite-sized treats.
Amy Rosen visits with the seaweed lady at the National Post, while the Appetizer blog has an interview with Chef Raymond Blanc as well as the subtle changes the global food crisis is having on local pita bread.
At the Globe and Mail, Chef Massimo Capra makes watermelon panzanella, Elizabeth Renzetti also has a piece on Chef Raymond Blanc's new TV show, and Beppi Crosariol talks about wine "cons" and two new movies about a 1976 upset in Paris when California wines beat out French wines for the top awards. In Vancouver, Alexandra Gill reviews Chef Rob Feenie's new restaurant (only a slight conflict of interest given that Feenie also writes for the Globe), and Leslie Beck has more info on children and cholesterol medication - that is - don't do it!
The comments section over at The Star is closed on Kim Honey's piece, so I'm commenting here.
If someone can't make some flipping toast without setting it aflame (http://www.thestar.com/living/article/419237) they probably shouldn't be attempting to dispatch some creature via blows to its head with a stick.
What does Kim Honey mean by "fish may not have faces, but they do bleed"? Fishes have faces, don't they? What constitutes a "face" in Ms. Honey's world?
Well put regarding the Star article. It's all over the map and full of some very bad ideas, but the main thing that gets me is that she shows no compassion. Also, I'm fairly certain that Queen Anne's Lace is poisonous.
Melissa,
Oddly, I missed that bit about fish faces. I have no idea what she means, perhaps she's confusing fish with shellfish. It's all a bit disjointed.
Amy,
Agreed, it seems like no one edited the editor in this case, like there was nobody there to go, "No, seriously, you're joking right??"
A Google search reveals that the leaves of Queen Anne's Lace are poisonous, but the root is edible.
It's this post-Pollan craze that so many food writers are into, right now. It's as if, in the name of trying to show themselves as unhypocritical conscientious meat eaters, these writers feel that they have to show that they have the cajones to kill the animals themselves. I seriously think that the Kim Honey and the Toronto Star were hoping to be sensationalist, though. I mean, c'mon? The photo of her cuddling the rabbit with the description that she's trying to calm it before slaughter? They knew exactly what this article would do and now they're hoping that enough people have read Michael Pollan that they'll jump to Honey's defence, but that's missing the point (as was pointed out above) that the reason people are outraged is that this women wrote an unapologetic piece about a rabbit getting its head bashed in. And for what? To sell a couple of newspapers. Shame on the Toronto Star!
I think you've hit the rabbit on the head Tsila.
Because anyone knowledgeable on the subject of ethical eating, or the global food crisis, or the environment in general, has to know that eating meat is unnecessary and destructive, and is the last bastion of selfish hedonism that we permit. Ethical foodies will give up their SUVs and their incandescent light bulbs, but will desperately fight to be able to continue to eat meat.
Honey appears to believe that if she buys into the vegetarian mantra of "if you eat meat you should be able to kill it and clean it yourself" she gets some sort of "get away from PETA free" card, but she misses the point. As I point out, there's more to killing your own food than just whacking it with a stick - and failing. All she manages to do is demonstrate exactly WHY we DON'T let people kill their own food and instead have rules and regulations that animals be slaughtered in a specific way, in a specific slaughtering facility - because most people just aren't bright enough to do it properly themselves.
Sheryl, thanks for that eloquent review of Kim Honey's rambling and self-absorbed article. Does the Star no longer use editors?
Interesting that she wrote a piece awhile back about the use of animals in art to get a shock reaction from viewers (think Casuistry). She needs to go back to reviewing cake icing.