Ten Pounds Of Meat

Last night my neighbor brought us ten pounds of meat.

I’d done him a minor favor expecting no payment but he brought over this meat as a reward; his wife works for a restaurant food supply company where employees get a good deal on premium quality cuts.

This influx of meat presents us with a problem:

Where do we put it?

Ginny and I prepare a menu and shopping list two weeks in advance, and we’d just been to the grocery store so our refrigerator is stuffed with food already.

There is just no room for an additional ten pounds of meat.

Ginny shuffled things around and pulled out some things she usually keeps in the freezer but which can stand to be unfrozen. But there was still not enough room for all this meat.

Food storage has always been a problem for humanity.

Back when Florida Indians hunted mastodons, or when Eskimos harpooned a whale, everyone for miles and miles around would assemble to feast on the meat before it spoiled.

I once wrote an inspirational book, Strangers On The Earth, about men and women whose faith got them into trouble. I tried to use the letters and journals of the Christians involved as source material. One chapter is titled “The Admiral Of Mosquitoes”, it’s about Christopher Columbus.

His diary shows that when he reached the Indies he discovered the cannibals there solved their lack of refrigeration problem with ingenuity.

The cannibals ate prisoners they captured in battle with other tribes.

It’s tough to eat an entire human being in one sitting; and in the tropical heat the flesh of a dead human does not last long. So the cannibals kept the person they were eating alive.

For supper, they’d just slice off a steak or two at a time. For larger gatherings, say for Sunday dinner, they cut off a leg to roast.

They’d cauterize the wound so that the eatee remained alive, and they feasted on some meat while saving the rest fresh.

Of course there was no sense in trying to chase down the food every time you wanted a fresh slice, so they smash his or her legs and arms with a club to keep him from escaping.

And to nourish the victim, they’d feed him leftovers.

Using these culinary practices — which are not necessarily approved by Martha Stewart — a family of four could eat fresh meat for a month or two from a single captive.

Just goes to show that there’s no problem which can’t be solved if you really put your mind to it.

Ginny insists that I give some of the meat away.

The woman has no sense of history.