Quill Pigs and Blue Jay Kabobs- A Five Course Meal

     This is a re-posting of a blog from 2009. Sometimes, I like to look back at old work. I hope you do, too. ' Tis the season for nostalgia!

    I love cooking shows.  One of my favorites is the cooking competition “Iron Chef,” in which a challenger competes against a previously chosen champion. The chefs must create a five-course meal in one hour using a ‘secret ingredient.’ At the last minute, the show’s creator, with a dramatic, theatrical flourish, reveals the secret ingredient. The competition points are based on flavor, presentation and creativity in the use of  said secret ingredient. Each course, including desert, must contain the secret ingredient, which can be something obscure like Sea Squirts. Often, the secret ingredient sounds incompatible with all of the necessary courses.
     I just watched an episode where asparagus was served as an ice cream. Asparagus used as an appetizer, deep-fried and adorned with a chip of fried pancetta made me drool, but they lost me on the green ice cream. So now, ladies and gentlemen, I reveal to you the secret ingredient - PORCUPINE!
   One of my favorite dishes made by my mother was “Porcupines.” There wasn’t any porcupine in it, only meat balls made with rice in them. The ends of the rice stuck out of the meat resembling the quills of the porcupine. As a kid, I loved the adventurous idea of eating a porcupine, though to date, I have not.
     Endemic to the Old and New Worlds, porcupines are the third largest rodents on the planet, coming in behind Capybaras and beavers, which are all edible (I’ve eaten Capybara and it’s delicious). Porcupine is generally only eaten in desperation as it’s fatty and mineraly tasting. The wood pulp, bark and leaves they consume are astoundingly high in potassium imparting that flavor to the meat. One of the reasons they are so destructive is that they constantly seek sodium to offset the potassium they consume. In addition to trees, they eat ax handles, gloves, or anything else that has absorbed salt from sweat.
     The word porcupine comes from the French porc d’epine or “thorny pork.”  Consistent with the reputation of the pig, the ‘Quill Pig” has a voracious appetite. Because tree parts have less than 2% crude protien, less than most breakfast cereals, porkies have to eat a lot! The greatest wild predator of the porcupine is the Fisher.  To avoid the quills, they circle the porcupine repeatedly biting its vulnerable face until it succumbs. A Quill Pig can have 30,000 spines, each with a viciously sharp point and barbed end.
     The quills of North American porkies are two to four inches long, but the African Crested Porcupine’s spines are eight to sixteen inches long!    Long ago, the shafts of birds’ feathers were used as pens called ‘quills’ for their resemblance to hollow porcupine quills. The African porky quill could surely be used as a pen. Porcupines do not throw quills, contrary to popular belief. When threatened, they raise the spines up to make themselves look bigger and will run backwards towards an attacker. Easily loosened from the porky the quills quickly lodge into the attacker’s flesh. Working their way inward at the rate of an inch a day, the quills can be fatal.
    There are reports of Great Horned Owls, Ruffed Grouse, deer, bears, pigs, even a trout, and of course, dogs with embedded quills. I have not found reports of any Blue jays with quills, so this one that appeared at my feeders, may be for the record books.
   Omnivorous Blue jays are also hogs of a kind. I have had an enormous flock of 30-45 of them at my feeders this past week. I’ve had to put food out twice a day to keep up with them and they have driven off most of the other feeder birds. To slow them down a little and to amuse myself, I took a whole peanut in the shell and tied dental floss around the middle, securing the end to the feeder. The Jays try repeatedly to take the peanut only to be hauled backward. It doesn’t hurt them, only humiliates them. I wouldn’t hurt them, no matter how much they ate. I wouldn’t hurt a porcupine, either, though they have chewed on my house in the past. However, I do wonder how they would all taste in a savory pie.

  

                                          A Blue jay kabob with quill skewer - yum!

With thanks to Wikipedia and Marty Stouffer's Wild America

1. Woods, Charles (1984). Macdonald, D.. ed. The Encyclopedia of Mammals. New York: Facts on File. pp. 686–689. ISBN 0-87196-871-1. 
2. Macdonald (Ed), Professor David W. (2006). The Encyclopedia of Mammals. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-920608-2.

Mania

These spring days in April are wonderfully tantalizing. Though there is a bite in the harsh winds left from winter, the sun is delicious. It's strong and warm, like a good yellow mustard that surprises you in a sandwich. Everything is coming alive and gathering strength for the full roar of summer. During the winter, I would look out of the windows and count a day's meager ration of birds, a few chickadees, a couple of nuthatches. A good day might have brought a flurry of Pine siskins, though plentiful, dull in color. Now, suddenly the birds are everywhere! And the colors are astonishing - bright yellow Goldfinches, red Cardinals, even the Blue Jays look bluer. Black and white birds, like these Common Eiders are sharply contrasty in checkerboard feathers. Chasing after one another, they kick up silver splashes of water like fist-fulls of diamonds thrown across the surface. The hens dive and hustle away, sometimes biting back to keep the drakes at bay. I don't know why some of them don't just drown from exhaustion. The whole world has erupted in frenzied colors and displays. "Look! We're here!" shout the flowers and the birds. After a winter of listlessness, I feel full of energy, too. It's very easy to overdo with a rake.When I start cleaning out gardens it seems as if I've got to do it all at once, to make room for the tender little shoots to push toward the sun. Each day, something new comes up. The face of the garden changes as often as every few hours. I don't want to miss a thing because I left it too long to languish in last year's brown debris. David is positively intoxicated with the elixir of longer days, too. He has already painted one side of the house, put in a new kitchen faucet and painted a set of Adirondak chairs. He has a spectacular energy level; it's like living with a chipmunk. He wakes before first light and begins hauling tools out for projects. He'll start to trim with hand clippers, see a bigger shrub that requires the larger Electric Man Pruners, get those out along with five miles of extension cords, tangle them all over the yard, get out a step ladder, then an extension ladder, pull all the rakes out of the shed looking for a spade, leave half a bag of fertilizer on the front steps, and a tarp for leaves to be snatched by the wind. While doing this, he will have put on a ball cap, taken it off and thrown it into a chair, replaced it with a second one and repeated this process until there are six or seven of them scattered around the property. A little 'Wife Game' I play with myself is to count how many of them I put back on the rack every day. A good day is at least six. In a full blown thrash, he's been going at this pace nonstop for two weeks. At sixty three, he does not understand why he is tired already and it's not yet Memorial Day. Today, in response to his dismay at being exhausted, I did something I've never done before; I took away his tools. That had the effect of throwing a bucket of water on a flaming squirrel. Smoldering, he continued to run around, more aimlessly, but with plenty of energy. Now, I'll have to come up with another plan just to keep him from hurting himself. In the mean time, I will watch the antics of the birds, the flowers unfolding, and the skies for possible rain.

"Hey! Beat it! That's my girl!"









"Listen, both of you clowns back off!"