Bow Tie o’ the Day is one of my bow ties you have to see up close, in order to fully appreciate it. If you scrutinize these tasty chicken drumsticks, you’ll see a few of them have already had a bite taken out of them. Clever little details like that make an already fine bow tie extraordinary.
Although chicken is not an exotic meat, the exquisite Bow Tie does remind me of menus I encountered in frou-frou restaurants when I lived in the Baltimore/Washington, D.C. area. I lived there eight years, so I ate at a few of the finer establishments on occasion.
I was always surprised to see the most outrageously priced entrees on the menu were things like venison, pheasant, trout, rabbit, duck, elk, etc. I did not know, until I moved to back east, that I had spent most of my life eating exotic meats.(Asparagus was considered an exotic side dish.) And, of course, all those meats were free for us. Apparently, even when we had no money, we ate as if we were rich. We were obviously too stoopid to know it. We were redneck hicks, and I’m still proud to be the white trash I was taught to be.
Did I ever sell my soul to pay for one of these fancy meals? Yes. One time. I was curious, and I ordered duck. It did not compare to the duck Mom prepared. In fact, its taste did not resemble duck at all. Duck fail! The worst part of it was that after I paid for it, I was too broke to eat out for another six months.
Once, when I was a kid, Dad headed to California to hang with his bee family, and he was going to be there longer than usual. It was winter– the time of year when we were usually tight on money. He gave a guy a can of honey in trade for the guy to bring Mom a few rabbits for us to eat while he was gone.
A few days after Dad left for California to babysit his precious bees, the dude brought Mom the skinned rabbits in a bucket. She thanked him, and off he went. But when Mom started to put them in a big Tupperware container to put them in the fridge, something about them just didn’t seem right to her. When Dad called to check in, Mom told him there was something hinky about the critters. Dad told her not to use them and he’d deal with it when he got home. Somehow, Mom managed to feed us while he was gone. Hell, we probably ate honey for every meal.
When Dad got home, he opened up the Tupperware container. He said a word or two that I won’t write here. Those skinned “rabbits” were cats. Dad left the house for a couple of hours, and when he came back he had the can of honey he had bartered for the rabbits. And a couple of hours after that, the rabbit guy showed up with a dozen real rabbits, a sheepish apology to Mom, and looking a bit roughed-up. And I remember he brought authentic rabbits to us every now and then throughout the winter. Dad was a very persuasive guy. It wasn’t about the deal. It was about hurting cats, and feeding his family, and messing with Mom.