Where the Wild Things Were

[elleng]

"IN 1879, a homesick Mark Twain sat in an Italian hotel room and wrote a long fantasy menu of all his favorite American foods. The menu began as a joke, with Twain describing the 80-dish spread as a “modest, private affair” that he wanted all to himself. But it reads today as a window into a great change in American life — the gradual, widespread disappearance of wild foods from the nation’s tables.

Twain listed cranberry sauce, “Thanksgiving style” roast turkey and the celery essential to poultry stuffing. But he surrounded these traditional holiday dishes with roast wild turkey, frogs and woodcock.

Along with hot biscuits, broiled chicken and stewed tomatoes, Twain wanted turtle soup, possum and canvasback ducks fattened by Chesapeake Bay wild celery. In Twain’s day, New York City markets still sold raccoon, a profusion of wild ducks and bear. From Delmonico’s restaurant to hunters’ homes, the nation’s tables held an easy blend of wild and cultivated foods.

So it was natural for Twain’s wonderful menu to include the best of America’s forests and waters, as well as its orchards and plowed fields. But for that very reason, it was as different from the first Thanksgiving feast at Plymouth in 1621 as from our own intensively domesticated holiday meals."

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http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/26/opinion/26beahrs.html

[Botany]

1. mmm possum!

yummy!

[elleng]

2. Oh YUCK!

What's her face!