I thought it would be an interesting exercise to challenge my readership today.  See how many of you I might alienate in just one post!

Let me preface with a little history.

I flirted with vegetarianism waaa-aaaay back in my very early twenties.  Not surprisingly, it was during my university years… where, one morning, nause0us after an evening binging on alcohol, Doritos and a frying pan of soot encrusted fried mystery meat, I swore off.

Not the alcohol.  Not the Doritos.  Just the meat.  For almost three years.

My first taste of meat came again two and a half days into what would be an adventure of a lifetime, several months traveling in Central America.  There I was, the palest and freckliest of Canadians, alone, scared, with nary a word of Spanish, half starved, having eaten nothing but the peanuts saved from my flight… I succumbed to familiarity and comfort and needing only to know numbers up to five… “Combo Uno, por favor.”

And that was it.  Three years of clean, green living essentially eradicated with a Big Mac.

I said I loved yoga.  I didn’t say I had principles.

I cannot deny that since allowing meat into my diet, and certainly after having kids, it has become a staple most nights a week.  We try to limit the red meat, adding more chicken, of course, as well as pork.  Probably not enough fish, I’m guessing, but I get it in here and there.

With all the hoopla over the quality of meat production lately, with movies such as Food, Inc. we, like so many other families across North America, have begun to question the role of meat in our family’s diet.  Between the conditions in which cattle, pigs and chickens are raised in the industry of meat production as well as the increased use of antibiotics and the questionable diets, it’s really made eating meat a more dubious endeavor than ever before.

Between the quality and health issues of large-scale meat production and ever-growing economic concerns, the viability of conventional meat consumption has been brought into question. Which brings me to the prospect of adding more wild game meats to one’s diet.

Game isn’t just for NRA sympathizing rednecks anymore.  It’s going mainstream.

Sure, venison has always held it’s place on the expensive menus of frou-frou restaurants, but increasingly, grocer’s conventional meat coolers are giving way to game farms and even hunting itself, with both growing in popularity as people are taking the time to learn more about where to find game meats, foul and mammal, even learning the art of hunting for themselves.

With the known health benefits, but also more and more for being a less expensive alternative, it’s making it worth people’s while to consider game as a part of their diets.

For those who object to the hunting, there probably isn’t much I can say to change your mind.  As one who formerly opposed the practice, I can appreciate the arguments.  However, as one of the newly converted- my suburban born and bred, University of Virgina educated, Engineer of a husband killed his first deer last year and landed his second just last week- I also appreciate that the animal I’m eating, up until ending up in my freezer, lived freely, eating a diet of grasses for which it was intended- green, as green can be!- and, I like to think, he probably had the opportunity to procreate heartily and enthusiastically before his demise.  I know you can’t say that for any of the beef in your grocer’s freezer.

If you’d consider choosing game meat occasionally, let me point you over to a recent article that might clarify for you a little further….