The build-up to Christmas begins
Susie-Belle has had without doubt the most delicious week of her life.
From Friday last to today, she was served up such an exciting range of flavours and textures that she visibly went up several notches on the happiness scale whenever she saw either of us in the kitchen.
The festive feasting started Friday night when Michel brought home an intact, furry hare which he set about skinning & gutting under the close supervision of the girls who sat fixated at his feet during the grisly but necessary process. As a reward for her assitance, he offered Susie-Belle a tiny morsel of hare’s liver and this set in motion a remarkable few days of culinary joy.
More of the liver was joined by other bits of the hare’s offal – the lungs were remarkably spongy and generous in size – each juicy piece of gamey giblet was gobbled up by Susie-Belle without a nanosecond of hesitation; Renae was far more discriminating and only reluctantly ate some kidney, preferring to leave the rest to her sister. She’s not a fan of offal and it would seem the rich aromas and tastes of hare offal were really not going to be enjoyed.
The next day raw meaty bones were on the menu for breakfast – step forward one hare ribcage, again Renae wasn’t taken with it, which suggests the taste of hare wasn’t appealing, not just the offal; not to worry SusieB took around 5 minutes to crunch and grind her way through it. Michel needed to make some room in the freezer and took out a fillet of venison. That was too tempting not to serve some up for the evening meal for the girls; venison served on a bed of mixed, pureed veg swiftly disappeared down the hatch.
Sunday we had family over for a pre-Christmas, Christmas lunch and little slices of roast goose meat with crispy roast potatoes was later shared with the pooches. That was a definite favourite, shame for them that I had my sensible-head on and maintained strict portion-control, they’d have easily managed a second, possibly a third helping.
Christmas in this house isn’t ever Christmas without turkey and the next day bits of turkey frame were crunched and munched. Makes a nice change from a chicken wing.
Tuesday and Wednesday were a mixture of the remainder of the hare rib and raw loin of lamb; Susie-Belle gave up when she got down to the toughest, hardest bits and left Renae to busy herself for a few hours on the meal-mat making the most of the lamb bone.
Thursday was amazing and all quite unexpected. Michel brought home a lobster. A big lobster. He made a fantastic lobster salad for us and unbelievably, the girls sucked and crunched their way through a couple of lobster legs. But there was more….he’d also got himself some beef fillet. A big beef fillet. Needless to say, after their lobster starter, our gorgeous, appreciative girls were served a little portion of diced beef fillet each with mixed veg. They slept well Thursday night with lobstery lips and beefy breath.
The first foodie week of Susie-Belle’s life came to an end with a handful of king prawns for supper mixed with goat’s yoghurt and shredded carrot.
And now the week before Christmas needs menu-planning
