Born On April Fool's Day
Fighting Back With Humor
I had a crazy sister that was disinclined toward hard work but always wanted to own her own business. She bought the lines that a bunch of miscreant entrepreneurs pitched to sell her a Meal Assembly franchise: “You can manage the business for your own convenience. Customers will follow your rules. It will be easy. You’ll have more money than God.” They all failed. All of them. I was in the turnaround business and she came to me for help. After a few months she ran away screaming complaining of panic attacks and impending divorce. She was prepared to lose everything. I agreed to buy the assets from her and complete the turnaround. That was June 2018. Bad timing. We were stuck, sis remained hysterical, and the divorce happened anyway.We struggled mightily through the fall and winter. It seems that everybody did. With failu
re imminent and little to lose, we decided to start a restaurant. So come night on March 31st, with April Fool’s Day hours away, we released the last monthly online meal assembly menu using recipes Janet found on backwoods.com. These were all actual recipes, with the exception of the “Beaver With Cream Sauce.”
Some customers called, offering to bring us raccoons and squirrels. One customer was enraged that we were making fun of poor people that ate road kill, reciting her experience eating road kill bear. The best response was from Ruby, who wrote, "I sure hope you’re kidding. My house is surrounded by squirrels. I feed them nuts. One is so tame he takes it from my hand.” To which we quickly replied, “Is he fat? Can we come over?” She didn’t see the humor, firing back in all caps, “I’D PROTECT THAT SQUIRREL WITH MY LIFE!” We left her alone after that. Following is the text from the newsletter that went out that fateful night that we gave up on the meal assembly business and decided to have fun instead.
This month we decided to break a little ground. Most of you come to us to provide your staple diet, simply using us to free yourself from dining out without creating the need to cook. Some however come to us for adventure, buying meals they would never make at home. For the first group we have our customer favorites section. For you adventurers, CHECK OUT THE NEW RELEASES!
Janet feels that backwoods cuisine is highly under-appreciated. She has scoured cookbooks and the Internet to find meals that would make Granny Clampett proud. This might not be Americana at its finest, but it sure makes good, home cooked eating.
Some of these meals are frankly a bit pricey. For example, Kyle’s Flaming Turtle Soup sells for a whopping $12 per serving, roughly twice our usual price. We realize that turtle is not for everyone but, if you are like me and simply love it, you will be willing to pay the price. Turtle meat is not that easy to acquire and even at $12 per serving this is probably our lowest margin meal. It is also our most exotic meal, as we have been able to procure everything else from local and regional sources.
We were concerned that the menu would be weighted too heavily toward squirrel recipes, which are available in abundance, so we limited these to two offerings. With the little critters digging up our tulip bulbs by the dozens we know a lot of people will delve in to these meals with special fervor.
Even though you spring gardeners probably share our disaffection with squirrels, we recognize there are certain sensitivities that we may rubbing the wrong way. To those people we say, “Just try to grin and bear it.” Rabbits are indeed cute, doves carry a special symbolism, beaver is our state mammal. This is all true. So try the local goose. (We are harvesting these through a special permit with the parks department.) If more of us ate goose our city parks would be much nicer and cleaner places to visit.
Because of limited availability of many of the meats used in these recipes we are limiting order quantities to 2 meals per household so that all of you get a chance to sample these rare treats. We will send a follow-up email later in the month to let you know if we are able to lift restrictions on remaining inventory.
Check out these special offerings:
Bushytail with Autumn Apples – simmered to perfection.
Squirrel croquettes – just pop into the microwave!
Dove Nuggets - Gluten Free!
Kyle's Flaming Turtle – spicy and nutritious.
Slow-cook BBQ Goose Sandwich – we cook your goose for you.
Beaver with Cream Sauce – a favorite with larges families!(David made this one up.)
Grouse n' Noodles – local grouse with sage seasoning.
David's Bean and Bunny Soup – try it this Easter!