Rat And Mouse Recipes you can learn to LOVE
if times get Hard enough
by Anita Sands astrology@earthlink.net

Bush's war costs us 90 billion every few months. At that rate, the USA will be broke in two years. So looking ahead, to a world without consumers, factories, industry, employment and house payments and car payments made on time, you want to earn to eat simpler foods.

Mice aren't that bad. Especially not with chilies and tortillas! It's all how you look at them. When the big crash that has to come to pay for all the wars and bombings hits, you're going to drool for any extra mice running around your house.

And make no mistake, those rats deserve to die. They’re predators. Those ORANGES in the trees that get hollowed out, peels dropped, perfectly eviscerated, that’s RAT DAMAGE. Avocados, any fruit tree you have will be stripped by rats. I have 20 cats and rats strip my trees! So Get your kids beebee guns, and send them outside at night to nail the varmints. Don’t tell children that tomorrow’s enchiladas will be made of rat meat. Just stack the corpses under a towel until the kids go to school. Keep the cat off them.

RECIPE FOR "Enchiladas El Mouse-o EN EL HOUSE-O"

6 corn tortillas 6 mice parboiled, stripped, boned, chopped, seasoned.
2-3 large red dried chilies soaked in water 5 min. l chopped green onion,
cilantro for decorating. Oil/onions. Salt pepper to taste,

Make regular enchilada sauce by grinding the soaked chilies in their own pot
liquor, and straining well to separate the chile skin from the chile's
red meat. Then, fry onions; throw sauce in for l minute. Set aside.

Heat tortillas on a greased skillet, drop into sauce until covered, pull
out, and then fill the sopping wet tortilla with about 2 tbsps. Mouse burger,
roll. Set rolls in a dish, line all six up. Pour remaining sauce on top.
Decorate with any old cheese, l chopped green onion. Chopped
olive. Bake l5 min at 350. Festoon with Cilantro. Serves two.

Shepherd’s PIE

Not every shepherd can dice a lamb every time his belly rumbles. So many
have learned to make do with DICED FIELD MICE.

Take 4 potatoes, boil, mash, and season, add cream, mash some more, line 8"
pie shell with them.

Boil six medium sized mice. Rats are ok if you know what they've been
eating. No Buick upholstery or graveyards.

If the rodents are the right size, you should have a cup of rat meat
(depending if you've cleaned the carcasses well enough.) Season with
salt, pepper, cayenne, add l cup blanched, chopped almonds, l cup
cracker crumbs, l egg, (reserve l tsp for topping) making a burger.
OPTIONAL: bell pepper, onions, cilantro, parsley, thyme, oregano, l can
creamed corn, l can of those crunchy chinese water chestnuts,
chopped olives, a dash of catsup or tomato sauce.

Fill the pie with chunks of savory mice meat. Cover with more potatoes. Use egg/cream to wipe down pastry top of pie so it toasts brownish in oven. Many do this after a half hour of baking, as you don't want the toasty part to blacken!

Remember, a rabbit is just a big rodent. The taste of the flesh isidentical. Ask any concentration camp visitor.

BARBECUED NORWEGIAN SHIP RAT
We who live near San Pedro Port/ harbor get a rare treat! The NORWEGIAN RAT is so large (size of an adult siamese cat,) that it can be barbecued on a grill.

Family members see that covering of toasty barbecue sauce and think they're eating chicken! The trick is this: the rat's rib cage is much much longer so you have to break chest section off at a reasonable facsimile of a chicken's length in the corpse stage.

NOTE: NEVER let your family see you chopping or peeling a rat. They lose faith in you! The neck is the dead giveaway. It's way chunkier than any chicken they ever saw. Take it off at shoulders, give it raw to a cat at far end of property. Of course FOUR DRUMSTICKS is also a major giveaway. But kids don't count, thank God.

TIP: when cooking rodents, pre-soaking in herbal solutions with vinegar, soy, sherry, lemon, orange, onion, garlic, your a standard marinade, up to 5 hours helps take away that pesky rodent flavor. AND the longer you cook it, with the otheringredients, the better the meat tastes.

When I was raising four children as a single mother, (I never let their Spaniard father get our L.A. address, as I'd fled him,) I used to pick purslane (Berdolagas in Mexican) which grew on all curbs between the sidewalk slabs. They loved to eat it in garlicky tomato sauce until one day the kids saw me picking the greens. They said "MOM are we that poor? DOGS PEE THERE!" After that I had to eat it all myself, so that's what I mean about children not knowing stuff.

My boys unconsciously went along with the food-providing however and brought home the bacon any way they could. They used to hawaiian sling up braces of corbinas in Malibu surf. They'd peel abalones off the rocks. Dig clams out of the lowtide beach sand. We'd meet the sportsfishing /tourist boatson the pier at noon and ask if any undersize specimens were on hand. We also got the over-limits fish which had been left by tourists in the boat's bait tank. They were always loaded with extras and we got them. Sigh! We had our childhood at the same time only I was more aware of putting food on the table 3 x a day! They just thought they were having riotous fun!

So hey, in case rat days fall upon our great country, save this file, send it to pals as a rattachment, tell them it's all about fat meaty protein sources randomly occurring in the urban setting. Rodent how do I love you? LET ME COUNT THE WAYS. In enchiladas, tacos, .....and in sauce bernaise!