Pet Rabbit Meat for Dinner

There are some things you don't forget. For years, every time I opened the porch freezer I was greeted with an frozen elk head, a gigantic coon tail rattler, and a road kill owl with one eye-ball hanging out. A woman doesn't forget things like that. Nor, does a girl forget the night she ate her pet rabbit for dinner.

Barbara wasn't a special named recipe. Barbara was my pet rabbit, and she had met an untimely fate. Accidentally eating her left, a lasting bad taste in my mouth for many years to come.

During the late 1950s we lived on a commercial rabbit ranch, in Huntington Beach, California. There my grandmother raised rabbits for the grocery stores throughout Orange County, while my young parents both worked for Douglas Aircraft.

We're not talking about a few rabbits, we are talking about raising thousands of rabbits every year. Naturally, like most farm or ranch families, we ate both what we grew and raised. Rabbits, as cute as they are, weren't absent from our dinner table.

However, my brother and I had a few pet rabbits who were exempt from market and joining us at the dinner table. My favorite, a rabbit named Barbara, was one of them. With each litter of babies, I was allowed to choose a favorite to keep and all the others went off to market. The income from them went into my school savings account.

Taking care of our rabbits for market and our pets were an important part of our chores. Likewise, skinning rabbits, tanning rabbit hides, and knowing how to properly cut a rabbit carcass were skills we grew up with.

Today, many children and their parents would probably be aghast at the prospect of taking the life of what most view as "pets."

I was in the third grade, when my best rabbit, Barbara, the one I intended to show at the county fair, turned up missing. Her hutch was empty. Grandma was nowhere to be found that afternoon. My little brother suggested that she had somehow chewed a hole in her hutch and escaped. Checking the rabbit cage over, I knew that wasn't possible.

Accusations flew as I pointed the finger of blame at my annoying little brother, who was prone to not-so-funny pranks. I was certain he had hid my rabbit. "Just wait until mom gets home from work," I hissed at him as we went into the house to wash up for supper.

As usual, dinner's main course, was rabbit prepared in one recipe or another. We had a strict dinner time, that regardless of when the adults arrived inside the house for the evening -- we kids knew had to be adhered to. Dinner was somehow, always waiting on the stove for us to dish up for ourselves.

That day, Mom and dad were both late, and Gram was busy taking care of our baby sister's needs. We ate in silence, as I waited for an adult to sit down to dinner, and make the little brat fess up and meter out his punishment.

Gram was the first to arrive and I quickly filled her in, certain of the guilty party, demanding to know where my rabbit was. It was then that she very apologetically explained that my pet rabbit had spooked when she was passing by and made a loud noise, resulting in the rabbit breaking it's neck when it ran wildly into the wall of her hutch. Not in a position to waste food, we had eaten Barbara for dinner. Needless to say, that's one meal I've never forgotten.

Rabbit Simple seems complicated, but in actuality is really a simple step-by-step old timey rabbit recipe. If you are making it with wild hares, please soak the rabbit meat in milk over night before preparing this dish.

Ingredients:

• 4 whole rabbits, properly cut
• 1/4 cup peanut oil
• Flour
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon pepper
• 1 Cup White Zinfandel
• 1 tablespoon salted butter
• 3 green onions, finely chopped
• 1 teaspoon minced fresh garlic
• 1/3 cup honey
• 1 cup of V-8 juice
• Beef, rabbit, or chicken stock (to cover)
• 1 tablespoon fresh chopped rosemary

Instructions:

• Heat oil in the skillet
• Combine salt, pepper, and flour and sift onto plate
• Dust the rabbit pieces with flour
• Sear them over a high heat, turning until brown on all sides
• Remove from skillet
• Deglaze skillet with Zinfandel
• Remove the liquid and reserve
• Add butter
• Saute the green onions and garlic
• Add reserved liquid
• Add honey
• Add V-8 juice
• Add fresh rosemary
• Bring to simmer
• Add rabbit pieces
• Cover and cook for 3 1/2 hours on medium heat
• Remove meat
• Increase heat cook liquid down until somewhat thick
• Remove and run through food processor
• Return to pan for further thickening
• Place rabbit on platter and cover meat with sauce

Serves 8.

Often Gram would make November Rabbit, a dish that went hand-in-hand with cooler weather and the availability of both apple cider and apples, in our local markets. This recipe was a favorite in our house.

Ingredients:

• 1 rabbit, cut into pieces
• 3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
• 1 cup flour
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon white pepper
• 1/2 teaspoon paprika
• 2 1/2 cups of sweet apple cider
• 3/4 cup heavy cream
• 3 apples (variety of choice), peeled and cut into wedges

Instructions:

• Combine flour, salt, pepper, and paprika and sift
• Coat rabbit pieces in mixture
• Set aside
• In large frying pan, heat olive oil over medium heat
• Add rabbit pieces
• Cook until browned on all sides
• Add apples and saute
• Puree cider and heavy cream
• Add to mixture in frying pan and bring to a slight but not rolling boil
• Place rabbit pieces on a platter
• Spoon sauce over

Serves 5.

Along with rabbits, we raised cattle, chickens, turkeys, geese, and a host of other animals. We also grew corn for the commercial market. A special treat for my brother and I -- was to be allowed to sleep in the corn field on old army cots with Gram. At night she'd read stories to us by kerosene lantern, or tell us ghost stories before we fell asleep under the stars. Then, we'd awaken to the sound of gun shot -- it was time to shoot the marauding American crows.

Gram taught us that crows were perhaps the smartest birds on the planet. They can even use twigs and other found objects, as tools and can be taught tricks. They are survivors!

Crows flock in large numbers both for safety from predators and weather. Sometimes they are attracted to a certain spot. For whatever reason, they were attracted to our rabbit ranch and particularly every crop of corn that Gram grew.

Often Gram's cornfield bedtime stories were made up ones with true facts about crows, some of the more interesting facts are:

• Crows mate for live, until one of them dies
• While most crows don't make it through their first year, after that they can expect a long bird life
• Some crows have lived in captivity as along as fourteen to over twenty years
• One crow lived it's entire life in captivity and died at the age of fifty-nine
• Crows, unlike other birds, can tell one person from another
• Crows today, are highly susceptible to West Nile virus

However, in Gram's day, crows were a force to be dealt with, and crows could end up in the cook pot. Crow pie was the result of our nights in the cornfields. Retrieving the downed crows was my brother's job in the cornfields.

Surprisingly, some crows can be quite hefty, much like a small Cornish hen. Because they are wild, it's wise to clean them very thoroughly and look them over to make sure they are basically healthy and without sores or other obvious defects. We always soaked any wild game, including birds in either milk or some other liquid for at least overnight. The sweetness of milk will often remove the more gamey taste of wild meat.

One favorite recipe was to bake a number of crows in the oven together -- at least one for every person at the dinner table. This recipe also works well for small doves and pigeons.

Ingredients:

• 8 gutted and de-feathered crows, minus heads and feet (the same as with any poultry)
• 4 tablespoons butter
• 1 cup flour
• 1 tablespoon cinnamon
• 1/2 cup honey
• 1 cup orange juice
• Grated orange peel
• 1 cup of seedless grapes
• 2 peeled and sectioned oranges
• 1 cup toasted and crushed almonds

Instructions:

• Preheat over to 325 degrees
• Line glass baking dish with aluminum foil in a manner to make a tent over the crows
• Wash and pat dry birds
• Stuff inside of each crow's cavity with grapes
• Arrange crows along center of dish in a row
• In a saucepan, melt butter
• Mix in flour, honey, and cinnamon
• Cook until thick, stirring constantly
• Spoon mixture over crows
• Seal foil pouch over birds
• Bake for 20 minutes
• Remove from oven
• Sprinkle with toasted and crushed almonds
• Sprinkle with grated orange peels
• Place orange sections on top of crows
• Return to oven and bake until done

Serves 8