Tuesday 25 September 2007

Skippy from the vaults

There's not been much cooking going on since Friday, and won't be for a while. I'm still not too well, though I'm definitely better - enough that I'm going back to work tomorrow, but pretty low on energy. We've been eating the leftovers, with some extra frozen veggies. Now that they're gone, it's time to raid the freezer.

I've got some chilli con skippy out for tonight, with baked potatoes and salad. Back when I made the chilli, I set some of the mince and tomato mix aside before adding the spices and beans. I often do this - it can turn into many other meals with a few tweaks. This time I've added basil, oregano and red wine. Skippy bolognese for tomorrow, yum.

I've felt compelled to call kangaroo meat "skippy" ever since I heard some fool propose that we should rename it to "austral" to hide its origins for the squeamish. It didn't take, and now I can't even find this mentioned on google. Excellent. I'm all in favour of eating kangaroo - it's a native product, very low in fat, much better for our environment than beef, and as cruelty-free as a meat can get. There are no feedlots or abbattoirs; the animals must be killed in the wild by licensed shooters, who must adhere to humane standards. You can read the industry statement here.

After the roo, the plan is to go out for a nice curry dinner on Thursday. And then the bloke is off to a conference in Chicago, and I'm off for a couple of days holiday with the grrls in a health spa type place. Massages and bushwalks and getting wrapped up in mud and glad wrap, oh my! I've never done that before. After that, I'll have a week on my own before the bloke gets back. That will also be a bit light on the cooking front, but I will be making a cake on the holiday Monday. It's my birthday, and local work tradition is to bring cake for morning tea. I wonder if they'll recognise me after all this time off...

2 comments:

infoaddict said...

Oh, wasn't that a complete piece of stupidity? Column 8 (SMH section) also finally managed to put to rest the myth that "Australia is the only country to eat its national animal!!". Top country on the list - France. National animal - Rooster. 'nuff said.

If I'm eating the animal, I tend to call it "roo". If I'm talking about the live ones, it's "kangaroo". (Or, in my case, "the house mob", "the other mob", and "what the hell is that on the road??" :) ). Thus giving me "roo stoo" or, my current fave, "rootail stoo". Although "kanga bangas" is a pretty good name and I do love your "chilli con skippy".

Excellent article in the SMH on this very topic today: http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2007/09/25/1190486311919.html. Very sensible, debunks some of the common arguments against eating wild-harvest roos, such as "they're riddled with parasites!" or "it's cruel and inhumane!" and so on. Makes me look very seriously at my house mob and wonder what would happen if I bunged some six-foot fences around it (giving them, say, a 5-acre paddock with a dam which has always had permanent water), worked out how to de-worm them sporadically, and let them breed up on the land that only support roos (and wombats and rabbits and foxes and echidnas and ... etc) anyway.

Could be vaguely profitable down the track ...

Fiona (Eating Australia with verve!).

Georgie said...

LOL - chilli con skippy!

I'm totally with you on kangaroo - too many stoopid myths around and too many stoopid people who are happy to keep on believing them!

We eat it quite often (not as often as husby would like, since I find it a little rich / heavy to eat too often), and you've given me new inspiration!