Kill Da Wabbit

Well, I can finally say that I've tasted rabbit meat.  Not that it was on my "To Do" list or anything, but now I've done it.

Perhaps I should back up, though, and explain how we buy meat in this household.

We buy meat in bulk -- but not from Sam's Club or any such nonsense.  Being the hippies we are -- well, they are (my Unit and in-laws; I consider myself "half-hippie" at best) -- we buy our delicious, organic, grassfed beef from local farmers half a cow at a time.  Let me repeat:  half a cow.  That's a lot of meat.  (Make your own jokes.)  We split that "half beef," as it's called, between our three families (during a process I like to call "meat poker"); each family ends up with approximately 60-80 pounds of red meat deliciousness.  That is roughly one regular freezer full of meat.  My Unit has to play "meat Tetris" in order to put it into our freezer.

We order chickens this way, our Thanksgiving turkeys, and now most recently, rabbit.

I should add that I did not order the rabbit; I had no interest in eating rabbit.  My Unit ordered it.

After making a certain number of jokes about bunnies in our freezer, she roasted the rabbit in the oven with carrots and potatoes.  While it did smell good (not unlike roasting a turkey), I could not bring myself to try any when it was done.  Just couldn't do it.

The next day, she took the leftover rabbit meat and made rabbit and dumplings.  Now I love her chicken and dumplings -- LOVE IT.  Hell, I just love dumplings!  A wad of delicious carbohydrate goodness dripping in gravy?!?  What's not to like??

This, too, smelled delicious from the stove top.  I finally called up enough courage to taste a spoonful, with a large dumpling right on top.  It was warm, and the initial flavor was what I remembered from chicken and dumplings.
But then...

Then there was this taste, clinging to the roof of my mouth.  A kind of tangy burnt-ness I didn't like.  I described it to my Unit, even saying, "It almost tastes like it's burnt," and she said the taste I was describing was probably the "gaminess" of rabbit.
Eww.

I said, "But I still like dumplings!"
She said, "So just eat a bowl of dumplings!"

I took another spoonful of broth and just dumplings, but no go.  It still had that weird, "gamey," rabbit-y flavor on the roof of my mouth.  All those dumplings that I couldn't eat -- it still makes me sad (and hungry) thinking about it.

So there ya go.  I've tasted rabbit, and I didn't care for it.  I guess it goes to show that not everything tastes like chicken.