可愛い

And here’s the translation.

Hello Bunny.

Right before they were skinned and served with apples in a mustard sauce.

@Benedick: Don’t know whether I still have it buried in the archives, but I did a story for the college rag about a visit to the county fair. It opened with a charming description of the cute bunnies on display, then lurched to something like “and then their skin was peeled off like a latex glove.”

@nojo: I’ve never had rabbit, but now that I’m Mastering the Art of French Cooking, it is bound to come up.

And then there was the time I bought my rat Desdemona in McMinnville. Kid behind the counter asks me, “Feeder or pet?”

@blogenfreude: With apples and mustard sauce. I used to make it when I used to eat the flesh of animals torn from their living bodies and thrown still bleeding into a sautee pan with some golden-brown onions and a bouquet garni. I don’t do that any more.

P.S. They don’t taste like chicken. They taste like Peter Rabbit.

@nojo: I dimly remember them being sold at fishmongers in London who would do the peeling on request. Why fishmongers, I hear you ask? I think because fish was never rationed during the war and neither was rabbit. Or eels. That’s where you bought live eels from a big seething tub. The fishmonger would behead them and, strange to say, peel back the skin like a latex glove, jellied eel being a London delicacy.

@Benedick: That was also the day I saw clearly why a rabbit foot is unlucky for the rabbit.

@blogenfreude: Don’t ever, ever, EVER do a post here when you do that. You will make flippin’ and her adorable bunnehs have teh sad.

@SanFranLefty: OK OK OK … I will substitute … chicken!

@blogenfreude: Chicken – tastes like frog legs!

@blogenfreude: I used to have a pet chicken called Wonky. I still miss her.

@SanFranLefty: Apparently everything tastes like chicken except … oysters? Yeah, that’s it. And maybe dungeness crab.

@Benedick: Please forgive me for linking this … the chicken had more sense, no doubt.

@Benedick: @nojo: @blogenfreude: You people hurt my soul.

@Benedick: I frequent asian groceries, and they are not places for the faint of heart. There is just what you described, the box filled with live eels, no water, just the eels, writhing and slithering about. Worse yet, the most amazing sight I have ever seen in a food store, the garbage can filled with live frogs, big, fat frogs, all piled together, all struggling to be at the top of the pile, looking up with those big eyes, grabbing and struggling with those amazingly human-like front legs and hands. There is always a box of geoducks, giant penises with a shell at the back end, thats what they are.

Over at the butcher counter, more horrors, a tray of cox combs, a tray of pig uteri, of course, chicken feet, hearts, lungs, a grand guignol of food.

@flippin eck: Son of RML knows a guy whose bunny growls at him. (Also, a guy whose snake apparently hates him because it bites him all the time. S/RML says the snake is totally chill, however, and once held it for two hours without getting bit.)