Honestly, I feel the same ambiguity about beef. Interestingly, I am often asked as I order a 'veggie sandwich' or a local venue's creation called 'the asparagui', "Are you a vegatarian?" To which I reply, "I could have been, but I married into the wrong family".
For, this, is what one of our chest freezers looks like, nearly empty.
In a few months I will be mentally thrown back to my retail days in the dairy cooler as we rotate the 08 meat to make space for the newly wrapped sirloin, hamburg, chuck steak, stew meat and top and bottom rounds of 2009.
And so, it is not uncommon for the inside of my fridge to look something like this:
Yesterday, I opened the fridge to see a stack of meat taller and wider than I remember taking out for the week. I pulled one package after another - venision...the whole bunch. Eyebrows furrowed, I tried to make out the markings R.K.
You see, when we slaughter it is a very old-fashioned, men in the basement with sharp objects and women upstairs with paper and tape kind of process. We, the women that is, write things on the packages like the date, what variety of cut it is, and the initials of the person who owns the chest freezer the package will call home.
C.T. would have made sense. J.T would have made more sense. D.T, his brother, could even have cause me to stop mentally searching as they often trade cuts depending on what is left in each other's stock. But R.K. I couldn't place.
And then, with a clarity and connectedness to rival Keyser Soze, it hit me...
The dent in his brother's car
The phone call Sunday morning
The glimpse of a ribcage in the back of a truck as I dropped the girls off for church
R.K.
Road Kill
There's got to be a redneck joke in there somewhere, but right now I am hardpressed to find the humor in it. Ick. Just Ick.
What are you showing and telling?


