The Scavenger’s Guide to Haute Cuisine

Guess who’s catching the dinner?

By Steven Rinella

January 3, 2007

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Title

• The Scavenger’s Guide to Haute Cuisine

Author

• Steven Rinella

Publisher

• Miramax Books

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From Chapter 2: “Very Fleshy and Full of Life”

I flew out to get the turtle about a week later. I brought along my girlfriend, Diana, who’d never met my parents before. I was a little nervous about the introduction, because I hadn’t told my folks that she was a vegetarian. The night Diana and I met, at a party, I found her to be very attractive and smart and a lot of fun, so at first I chose to overlook her vegetarianism the way parents might overlook the condoms they find in their teenager’s dresser drawer. By the same token, when I told Diana that I hunted a lot, she chose to imagine me going off with my grandpa every couple of years to sit in a cabin and play cards, watching for deer out the window. She didn’t really grasp that hunting was basically what I do and how I get by. Because I almost instantly fell in love and couldn’t stand to be without her, I knew that the only logical course of action was to convert her to a meat eater. After months of dating, though, I had made only meager progress. Just once, I talked her into nibbling a fillet from a yellow perch that I caught through the ice in Montana. After that, I upgraded her status from pure vegetarian to 99.9 percent vegetarian. I felt that a visit to my folks might better explain to her what I’m all about and fully convince her of the merits of the hunter-gatherer lifestyle.

I didn’t want to break the awful news to them over the phone, so I figured that I’d tell my parents about Diana’s vegetarianism once we got there. Because I met Diana out in Montana, my dad was under the impression that I was in love with some badass hunter and fisherwoman. Even knowing that Diana was actually from Boston and was only in Montana for a two-year graduate program didn’t alter his expectations.

When Diana and I got to my parents’ house, I was at first surprised about how good my dad looked. The fact that he’d be dead pretty soon seemed preposterous. I didn’t have time to tell my dad about the whole vegetarian situation before he greeted Diana with a hug and said, “I’ve got a rod and reel set up just for you, sweetheart.” Then he went down to the dock and fired up the pontoon boat for some fishing in front of the house.
As we walked to the dock, Diana was panicky. “Steve,” she whispered. “I don’t want to kill a fish. I don’t even want to catch a fish. Tell him. Quick.”

“I can’t just come out and tell him you won’t go fishing,” I said. “Besides, you eat fish now.”

“I ate fish once! But you killed that fish, not me.”

“That’s pretty fucked-up logic, if you think about it,” I said. “Just come out on the boat, then act like you’re sunbathing.”

As soon as we pulled into deeper water, my dad cut the engine and walked up to the front of the boat. He set up a chair on the deck, baited a rod with two small hooks and live worms. He dropped the bait to the bottom, then said to Diana, “Sit down, girl.”

She looked at me nervously. I looked away. She sat down. My dad handed her the rod. Within seconds, something was bucking on the end of the line.

My dad was yelling, “Reel it in! Go! Reel it in!”