Thursday, March 27, 2008

Freakout book of the week

It looks and sounds so inviting, no? I mean, if you're a moderate treehugger, as I am. But inside, this book is freaky. First of all, although it's supposed to be a new edition and it has a brand-spanking new cover designed to catch the eye of coffee-swilling, recycling, suburban gardener types like me, the inside looks like it's straight outa 1975. Paging through this book reminds me that, as much as I enjoy my little fantasies of life on a hobby farm or in a secluded cabin, honestly, I'm best suited to life in the 'burbs. In my casual skim, I came across not one but TWO sets of diagrams on how to skin a rabbit! (Well, to be truthful, only one set was demonstrating how to do the skinning; the other was focused on gutting the rabbit so's you can eat it.) I stumbled across a recipe for headcheese but had to stop reading after I saw the first ingredient: "Head of a pig, calf, or lamb." I had to stop reading this book altogether when I learned that "welding a chain and making nails are basic skills." I'm nearly 42 years old and have never once needed either of those skills, so I'm guessing Back to Basics has a very different definition of "basic" than I do.

2 comments:

Will said...

That's too basic for me.

Anonymous said...

Just reading about skinning a rabbit would force me to be a vegetarian. No thanks, I'll stay in the 'burbs.