The tomatoes are still tastier in August and September, but you can still find something that slightly resembles a tomato in the depths of winter. What's unnerving is that, for the most part, we have no idea where our food is from. We don't know how it was handled, what it was sprayed with, how it was genetically engineered, what exotic technological marvels it embodies. In the old days, you could trust your hamburger meat, because you raised your own cattle, knew the cows by name, and personally hacked them up and cut them into little pieces. That's the classic, the one where the authors, Irma Rombauer and Marion Rombauer Becker, tell you how to cook a squirrel, a porcupine, a possum, a raccoon, a muskrat, a moose, a woodchuck and a bear.
All bear is edible.
Tough, strongly flavored bear may be improved by refrigerating at least 24 hours in an oil-based marinade . . . There's never been a more fearless, more aggressive cookbook. These women would cook anything this side of a house cat. The authors are unburdened by sentimentality. So you see they don't mess around.