It wasn't until my Peace Corps days in South America that I ate fried iguana. And yes...it tastes like chicken. Another PC buddy of mine had served previously in Nicaragua, but was pulled out and reassigned to Ecuador due to the escalation of Nicaragua's civil war. He had eaten it there often, as did many people. Nobody in Ecuador ate iguanas, so when we shot one out of a treetop behind his house with an ancient, single-shot shotgun, and set about preparing it for the fry pan, we had a group of about 10 incredulous kids crowding around, laughing at the loco gringos who were going to eat this...this thing. (The Ecuadorians, on the other hand, ate guinea pigs, called cuy) The sight of them roasting in the marketplace in the evening on long bamboo spits over a bed of coals, though memorable, never proved tempting enough for me to actually taste one. When it comes to eating rodents, it seems I drew the line at squirrels. The fried iguana, however, was delicious.
Growing up in Appalachia, there wasn't a whole lot of food that I can think of that I'd characterize as "challenging", but I guess that depends upon how one was raised. Three things I ate quite a bit of growing up were frog legs, turtle and squirrel.
There are two folk tales associated with frogs and turtles. One is that frog legs will jump out of the pan as you fry them. The other is that there are seven kinds of meat on a turtle. The former has at least a grain of truth to it, while the latter I just not sure about. But I certainly remember my grandmother asserting it as the God's truth...and she was the one who also did the turtle cooking.
Are you hungry yet? Then join me below the squiggle.
So...it occurs to me that the title of my diary might not grab a lot of folks right off the bat, so lets address the old wive's tale of frog legs "jumping out of the pan" first, and spend some fireworks right up front. Frogs legs, as much as the imagery of jumping out of the pan has its own special appeal, don't actually do that. But even after dismemberment and skinning, they do do something quite peculiar once you set about cooking them, and I can't think of anything else that does:
There is an explanation for what you just witnessed in that video...but first a bit on how those legs got to the frying pan to begin with. Growing up, my cousins/buds and I would go frog gigging. You took a broomstick, attached a tripod to the end, grabbed a strong flashlight and tied a canvas gunny sack to your belt...and set out wading down along a creek, or along the banks of a lake or pond. In the neck of the woods I grew up in, they were laden with bullfrogs. You could hear them croaking easily enough, even as you drew near, and once you trained the beam of a flashlight upon them, they froze in blindness. You impaled them with your gig, slipped them off of the prongs, and deposited them into your gunny sack...and kept on moving. It didn't take too long to end up with a sackful.
Actually, gigging the frogs was the fun part, even for someone like me who had an almost insurmountable fear of snakes and wading through muddy creeks at night. My buddies would sneak up behind me sometimes and silently prick me with their gig on my leg, just to watch me shoot up like a trident missile, sure that I had been struck by a water moccasin. I had a real thing about snakes. But I'd rather gig frogs as skin them. That's just tedious.
Let's face it...there's not a whole lot of meat on even a nice sized pair of frog legs. In a way, they are like chicken wings, but then...I like chicken wings, too. Whenever we went frog gigging, we came back with what's called a real "mess" of frogs. They were typically cooked up and served on a big platter, and it was messy but good eating. A pile of legs, and lots of napkins. My grandmother and aunts fried them, but didn't bread them. They fried them with butter and garlic, some ramps if available, and salt and pepper. It was strictly "finger food."
As for why they twitch when preparing, and the myth of them jumping out of the fry pan...here I wish I had Tranlator's expertise when it comes to explaining biochemistry. And, by the way, I dearly wish to do a collaborative diary with David...and he knows this...so...? David? Are you gonna come through? You and me, bro...let's do it! But frogs are simple creatures, like lizards. You can kill them, and cut them up, but their musculature retains simple nerve impulses. The addition of salt excites those dismembered muscles, in a biochemical sense, and provokes electrochemical contractions. That's the best I can do, since David isn't here to help me. But they don't "jump out of the pan."
Nevertheless, anyone who has feasted upon a mess of fried frog legs, a pile of wilted lettuce and some breaded and fried wild mushrooms can attest to the fact that they have "truly eaten." My grandmothers, both of them, were born in eastern Kentucky. One was born in Pike County, the other in Rowan County...both along the border with West Virginia. My grandma from Pike County could cook anything, and I do mean anything. My grandma from Louisa, Ky, was also a great cook, but not quite the survivalist that my Pike County grandmother was.
To "feel" for snapping turtles, you had to be a little bit crazy, at least in my book. I've eaten them, but you couldn't pay me to go after them. They are prehistoric, scary and downright dangerous creatures, I don't care how many kinds of meat they may have. They grow to over 80 pounds...and they can break a seasoning broomstick in their mouths as if it were a match. My uncles used to wade along creeks and rivers, "feeling" for them, and pulling them up when they found one. That's just Country ass crazy in my book.
And cleaning them is no small feat, either. You prod the turtle with a stick until it snaps, and one person holds on and pulls the stick so that the turtle's head extends, and you decapitate it. Another simple creature with a simple nervous system, the turtle's head will continue to snap, and can still be dangerous, for several minutes after it has been severed from the body. For that reason, old timers warn to never throw a snapping turtle head into the chicken pen.
Turtle doesn't taste like chicken. It's been many years since I last ate it, but my memory is that it tastes like either beef or veal...though some say that certain parts do have a chicken-like flavor. That's where the saying that turtle has 7 kinds of meat comes from. It's a lot of work...and it's better to sit down to the meal than it is to prepare it. That's the bottom line on turtle.
Now squirell...I gotta tell you, folks...even though I turned up my nose to guinea pigs in Ecuador, squirells, when you get right down to it, aren't that much different. They are both, I hate to say it, rodents...but squirells are quite delicious. My family would boil them with onions and celery and spices, them pull the meat and make a rice casserole. It was tasty. I've done some hunting in my time...not a lot, but some. Deer hunting, in Southern Ohio, was always too cold and too sedentary for me. You remained in one place, hoping for a deer to come by, and slowly froze to death. Sure, I like venison...but I'm quite happy to get it from someone else.
Squirrel season, however, began in mid September, and the woods are both gorgeous and still comfortable at that time. I hesitate to mention this, because most people already probably have a "are you kidding???" response to eating squirrels, but it's necessary to wait until after a few hard frosts before taking squirrels for the table. In the summer months, squirrels are prone to a parasite that we grew up calling "warbles." They are caused by a fly that lays eggs on the squirrel that hatch larvae that burrow under the skin. They are ugly, and not a bit disgusting. But when the weather turns to near winter, the parasites leave.
My father grew up hunting squirrels and other game, but he never carried on that tradition with me. He wanted nothing to do with it. It reminded him of poverty and hard times. As a kid born in 1927, he used to shoot foxes on his parents' farm and send the hides off to Sears & Roebuck. They would send him back a check for 50 cents per hide. That just goes to show you how much both the times and Sears have changed.
About ten years ago it was I who took my father hunting for the first time. He was in the very first stages of what we knew was to be the long slog of Alzheimers. We drove down to the property he was born on, and asked the current owners if we could hunt for the afternoon in their woods. They cheerfully said of course. We hunted squirrels that afternoon, and my 72 year old Dad bagged six, while I only got 3. Still, put together we had a mess.
We took them home and dressed them, and I prepared the last and most delicious squirrel casserole that anyone in the family had ever eaten. When we were young, it was just simple country fare. I used every culinary trick I had at my disposal...herbs, more sophisticated ingredients if you can call it that...but mostly just affection, and the realization that I might never eat this meal again with this man, my father.
We ate, we laughed...we bonded. It was priceless. And delicious.