Venison , should we eat more of it?

We're actually well supplied when it comes to fresh meat. Every year we buy a piglet which is then 'fostered' on our behalf by a friend with a smallholding. We pay for food and occasionally supply fresh scraps and after a few months this little piggy goes to market and comes home to my freezer as a variety of sausages, joints, chops etc. Once or twice a year my husband also buys a whole deer. He skins and butchers it himself and the venison goes into the freezer. We get fresh eggs from two sources and in exchange I provide jams and preserves. The allotment pretty much keeps us in salads, fruits and vegetables for most of the year although we're now discovering those things, such as onions for instance, that are more economical to buy rather than grow. I also grow a few flowers for picking in the summer, but I suspect we've set the seeds a little early this year.

It's certainly a pity if you can't buy a small amount of a new vegetable or fruit or meat (or whatever) just to give it a try.

I think where I differ from most people about food "shoulds" is that I don't regard any meat better or worse than any other. I just regard it all as food which I may or may not like. Aside from just staying alive, and it being available, liking or not liking is my only reason for eating any particular food. I feel fortunate, as we all are, to have so much choice. That's the reason I said there souldn't be any shoulds, if you see what I mean.

My GP says I'm healthy. I guess he means I've nothing wrong with me that can be attributed to bad lifestyle or eating choices. (Presumably ME and arthritis don't count as 'unhealthy', just a nuisance). Fortunate again, and thankful for it

We used to live near a ginormous Sainsburys which stocked those interesting veggies and fruit and we did try some, following the instructions given, but I can't think of anything more exotic than mangoes that we actually liked or seemed worth the effort.
Where we live now there's so much good local stuff that we rarely food shop in the major supermarkets and eat fruit in season much more as it tastes so much better.
We're very lucky - but fatter.

Bags perhaps I should have said "should we be ^encouraged" to eat more of it"

I think perhaps that many people are a bit reluctant to try something "new". Our local Morrison's has the most amazing display of "exotic" fruits and vegetables, many of which I have never heard of or seen before. (They also have an incredibly wide range of different mushrooms, one variety of which look as if they are some strange species of rising damp, not sure if you should cook them or contact Rentokil)

Most of the veg have accompanying information re. how to cook etc, but I still feel that many people don't buy them because they don't know if they will like them. I think in some ways this could also apply to venison.

I wish more supermarkets would do demonstrations and offer tasting samples. I would love to try some of the veg, but can't afford to waste money buying something that we may find we don't like.

Our farmers market has a stall - The Wild Meat Company - lots of venison when in season (deer are becoming a problem around here). They tell you which sort too - roe, red, etc. Sometimes we're lucky and may get hare too. The local butcher has a contact who delivers rabbits and game birds, so we're a bit spoilt for choice.

(Just looked up The Wild Meat Co - www.wildmeat.co.uk - they deliver!)

More venison ? yes,yes, yes, yes yes.

I can get it from my butcher, but I have to order it. I love venison burgers, and itoo first had them in South Africa . Movedalot I can get it in Waitrose.

DH insists on brown sauce sel, would be a bacon butty without it for him but no butter, that surprises me. He would still consider it a bacon butty if he added an egg.

Getting back to phoenix's post. When we go to the Christmas market I have a venison burger and love it. When we were in Cape Town they called all the various deer type animals venison and we ate loads of it. We loved it and I wish it was more available. What happens to the meat when they cull the dear? Why doesn't it come to my supermarket?

Couldn't eat it with brown sauce, or ketchup for that matter, but it has to be real butter and a lot of bacon.

I do keep brown sauce in the cupboard for the sons-in-law Sel but they obviously weren't brought up properly

No Sel - no brown sauce for me, but I suppose people can adulterate their bacon butty if they wish

jane and when no brown sauce? Sacrilege

Butty!

A bacon bitty is the one thing that my vegetarian daughter yearns for.
I like them made from white floury baps.

Thank you when
I forgot to add that when my son who is now a US citizen comes home, bacon butties are the mandatory first meal on English soil

Our monthly local farmers' market and at least one of the butchers in our daily market sell venison as roasts, steaks and diced. I quite often make a batch of burgers from the cheap cuts and have been known to splash out on roasting a saddle when we have had house guests.

Rabbit, guinea fowl and squab are also widely available and so too are game birds in season. In fact, I have a much wider choice of meat (and fish for that matter) within walking distance in this small North-eastern town than I did in West London.

jane you are absolutely right about how a bacon butty must (in its legal sense - there must be a law somewhere) be made. Lovely soft white, thick bread, slathered with butter and crammed with good quality, thinly sliced bacon with crispy fat. A British delicacy!

"'Well, there are rabbits, but they don't show up in the shops." Bags that made me LOL! Visions of them presenting themselves at the local butchers!

[mouth-watering emoticon]

Confession: I use brown, homemade bread.

And unsalted butter.

Still yummy.

envious I suspect you mean a bacon butty
Nothing to do with butty who posts on GN of course
A butty is basically a sandwich, but a thick-cut one, not a refined one - for example you would never have a cucumber butty, only a cucumber sandwich because they have to be made with thinly-sliced bread.
Anyway back to the bacon.
Your bacon butty (in my house, others may well differ in their views) should consist of as much crispy well-fried bacon (emphatically not soggy pink stuff) that you can cram between slices of heavily buttered white (not brown) thick-sliced bread, or soft rolls, variously known in different parts of the UK as barm cakes, baps, morning rolls or stotties.
Should be eaten immediately while the bacon is still very hot.
There! That will probably set the cat amongst the pigeons

PS DH tells me he nearly ran over an otter a mile or so up The Road last Saturday. They've been spotted at the top end of the loch for a year or two so it's nice that they're making their way down now.

Well, there are rabbits, but they don't show up in the shops. My neighbour two fields away has an air rifle and her grown up son sometimes shoots some rabbits which she stews. Hunting with a bow and arrow is illegal in this country or I might take aim. Good way to lose arrows unless you're a very good shot though! And we don't see many rabbits in the garden now, though we did the first year we were here. Plenty in the fields.

I'm surprised you don't have rabbit available locally Bags they abound here. Rabbit stew cooked in the Aga, lovely. Won't eat everything that's available locally, draw the line at seal and otter (and orca)!

I don't think there are any shoulds about it. We eat what we like, what's available, and what we can afford, which includes some venison and some bacon. If rabbit was readily available where we shop, we'd eat that too. When I lived in Thailand most of the meat I ate was seafood, because that's what there was.