Depression Stew Anyone?: Road Kill: It's Fresh, It's Organic, It's Free

[Better Believe It]

Road Kill: It's Fresh, It's Organic, It's Free
By Sandor Ellix Katz, Chelsea Green Publishing
July 28, 2009

How broke would you have to get to eat roadkill?

Don't freak out. This isn't a sensationalist necrophilic bizarre fetishized kind of thing. It's legit. Actually, depending on several factors, it can be perfectly safe (and entirely affordable) to eat meat that has been left by the side of a highway or county road.

In fact, there may be not much of a difference from a deer you hunt, and a deer you kill accidentally. Now, this may sound a bit extreme to you. But according to Sandor Katz, lifelong activist and food lover, roadkill has been a source of food for poor people since cars were invented. So, don't be classist. At least read more about it!

The following is an excerpt from The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved: Inside America's Underground Food Movements by Sandor Ellix Katz. It has been adapted for the Web.

If you pay attention and look at the road while driving (or, even more so, while walking or biking), you will inevitably encounter roadkill. Animals moving across the landscape are often unavoidable prey at fifty-five miles per hour. Little systematic counting has been done, but extrapolating from data collected by road crews in Ohio, one analysis estimates there are an average of more than one hundred million roadkill victims in the United States each year. Dr. Splatt, the pseudonym of a high-school science teacher who for thirteen years has organized students around New England to participate in a roadkill census, comes up with a very similar estimate of 250,000 animals killed by cars in the United States on an average day. Some people see food in these unfortunate victims of our car culture and regularly pick roadkill up off the road to take home and eat.

A few passionate souls I have encountered eat roadkill almost every day. My neighbors Casper and Pixey bring roadkill stews to our potlucks. For a while they did their frying in grease rendered from a roadkill bear they came across in the mountains. On one of my friends Terra and Natalie's visits, they had strips of roadkill venisons splayed across their dashboard drying into jerky.

Please read the complete article at:

http://www.alternet.org/environment/141595/road_kill%3A_it%27s_fresh%2C_it%27s_organic%2C_it%27s_free/

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

1. Does ketchup exist?

[Truth Talks]

2. Roadkill Cafe

Hmmmm...that might be a novel idea for a new restaurant. Customers who run over their own armadillo get a discount. :)

[Better Believe It]

6. There already is a Roadkill Cafe! Here's the menu!

[enlightenment]

3. Time to haul out the Road Kill Cookbook again . . .

or just pop this on the stove . . .

[Better Believe It]

4. Sure makes my mouth water! Yummy!

[Lilith Velkor]

11. mmmmm.

:9

[timo]

5. ???? fresh or day old???

how fresh are we talking? like the semi in front of you just took it out? or you drove by it the day before?

[Warpy]

7. I've eaten roadkill chicken

but I saw it hit and knew it was fresh.

It was my first and last experience dressing and plucking.

However, I'm not too much of a princess to repeat it should the need arise.

[pipi_k]

8. Do roadkilled Freepers count as food?

:evilgrin:

[Better Believe It]

9. No. We let the bears and wolves eat them!

[pipi_k]

10. Cruelty to animals!!!!!!!

wait till PETA hears about this...


:scared:

[Renew Deal]

12. The only roadkill I see around here are racoons, cats, birds, and occasionally dogs.

This article sounds like a sensationalist way of telling people to eat roadkill dear.

[formercia]

13. Road Pizza

is when the road kill gets run over one too many times.

[hedgehog]

14. One summer's night around 2AM, we heard something get hit out front.

My husband went out to check, and I heard the voices of the driver and later the state trooper. It all got quiet, and I heard my husband on the phone downstairs. Then I heard voices outside again. My husband and a neighbor were out on the front land field dressing the deer which had had its neck broken when it was hit by the car.

Another time, we heard a splat as a car went by, then a thump-thump, and thought one of our cats had been hit. My husband went out with a shovel, but came back laughing. Someone had lost an entire pizza, box and all, and the following car had run it over. Our big old dog Lassie really enjoyed her road kill pizza.