Saturday, February 21, 2009

Ew, jerky.

I usually wrinkle my nose when I think of jerky. It's so vulgar to me to be popping dried meat in your mouth like potato chips. Meat, especially dried, is NOT for snacks on the go.

But! I am capable of seeing things in a new light given the correct circumstances.

We were in Kentucky, the sky was blue, the geese were flying (south?), and we had just made it through some rough days of filming. 12 hour days, down to 2 degrees fahreinheit, and the only thing that had kept us going through it were the Toasti Toes foot and hand warmers you could hide in your mittens and boots. (Plus the 5 layers of wool. Oh, and of course the deadline of getting all the footage shot on schedule. But that's secondary.)



We made it through the tough days, and man, did we get rewarded for it! Three days later and it was 60 degrees out. Filming was a breeze.

It was under these circumstances that the General broke out the venison jerky.

I was the odd man out (or woman I should say) during the shoot in Kentucky. As I was pretty much the only girl, pretty much the only person under 25, pretty much the only girl under 25 who had lived in a city all of her life, I wasn't smack dab in the middle of the demographic for visitors to the range. Everyone liked to tease me a little about it ("betcha don't see wild turkeys running around in New York..."), but they were really great about making sure I was comfortable when we were out shooting.

"The General" was in fact a retired general and was one of the owners of the range. He was everything you would think a general would be, commanding respect even in civilian life. He lived about an hour from the range, and kept talking about how he'd have to bring some of the venison he'd hunted up to the range for us to try. I was stoked.

And so, on this beautiful 60 degree, post-2 degree day, he showed up in his white suburban and started handing out venison jerky.

Ladida. Here I thought I was going to get the chance to try some freshly hunted scrumptious venison, freshly hunted by a retired GENERAL, no less, and then it turns out it's in the form of JERKY. Sigh.
I took a piece anyway, just to be polite, ripped off a bite with my teeth and was utterly suprised.

This was some of the tastiest meat I had ever had. It was tender and the spices were incredible (the General told us that he dropped the meat off at a local place that seasons and dehydrates it for them). True, the meat looked like bark, but it had me practically begging for more.

I think the General was pleased that a city girl could be so happy about a piece of jerky.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

that looks, ummm, gross. but i'm glad you liked it. got any left?

Natalya said...

Haha, yeah. Jerky really needs to work on its presentation. But you'll have to take my word for it: it was TASTY. I WISH I had more...