Z:
>Kirt, recently I ate raw "wild" venison from New Zealand - perhaps you've
>had some there.  I was struck by the magnitude of the meat.  It was so much
>richer and more potent than cow has been, that I can remember.  I desired
>to eat less of it, even though it was "better".  It was so rich I ate about
>half of what I usually would with beef - I'll leave the weight out for
>those who don't wish to know of my glutony (it was less than 5 pounds);-)
>This got me feeling a lot, like learning to bow hunt.  But thoughts have
>been stirred up, also but considering Bob Avery's claim that less, much
>less is better.  Maybe the problem is that we are selecting from all these
>hybridized foods.  Maybe the wild foods would satisfy us more.  Indeed,
>we'd eat less because most wild fruit is less desirable, though maybe it
>would be when we really needed it and we would be finding the veggies more
>attractive, with our biochemestries not so altered by the high quantities
>of hybridized fruit.  I remember Oregon blackberries - they were delicious,
>but there was something about them.  Once the season got going, I could
>only palate them in their most luminous - drop into my hand from a slight
>touch.  If they were more or less than just perfect they were simply not
>luminous.  Surely after a few days of not eating, usually less desired
>foods would climb the ladder of desirability.  In our hunting and gathering
>and going without more regularily this was likely the case, eh?

Kirt:
Or put another way: wild foods are more nutritious so we would get the stop
faster. This seems very plausable. And has been my experience exactly with
wild RAF and wild fruit. (Maybe wilder is the proper word.) But again
veggies are weird. I would barely eat any wild veggies by pleasure.
Sampling wild vegetation is an interesting experience. It teaches one about
taste changes! Walk thru a wilderness and sample any and all vegetation
(esp those leaves you mention) and there is very little that has ever
tasted decent to me for more than a short mouthful. I guess the real test
is to eat only wild veggies for months or years at a time and see if one
would get "transistioned" from hybrid veggies! :)

Still, I get the sense that the wild veggies are so generally strong and
unpleasant not so much because the are so nutritious (which they are by
analysis relative to store veggies) but because they have something in them
to keep them tasting not-so-good so every animal in the world doesn't eat
them all. There is some research showing a hell of a lot of naturally
occuring pesticides in veggies. Perhaps in our domestication of veggies
(and hybridization towards blandness) we have been breeding out the worst
n-pests along with much of the nutrition. And: does cooking make these
foods and their nutrients more available?

NZ venison: I found it almost impossible to get commercially in NZ; much
easier to get it in the USA! It is exported. Kiwis wouldn't generally pay
top dollar for something that is so easy to hunt (and many don't care for
the gamey flavor; yummy!), so the vast majority is sold to overseas
markets. The NZ red deer (which is almost surely the type you were feasting
on) was introduced years ago as a sport game animal. They are usually shot
from helicopters by land owners who fence huge acerages of their property
to keep the population of deer inside. More and more venison farming
operations are springing up as well (lots of supplemental feeds,
medications even sometimes) but I doubt that a significant % of the venison
exports come from farmed animals. Beef is probably my least favorite
mammal, but it is the one more esily available. (There is buffalo available
in Denver which has a similarly "truer" flavor than beef.)

Hunting would be great, and also reinforce the social nature of it all:
even you or I (or you _and_ I) couldn't likely polish off a whole buck--not
to mention fighting over the liver ;). It's those wild boar in Hawaii that
capture my imagination, but I may not be manly enough to go after them with
a bow only as a beginner :)

>Da Free John is a self-proclaimed, and validated by many many many people,
>spiritual master, guru.  <snip>
>I don't want to let the cat out of the bag, but I'll be integrating some of
>his perspective in my up and coming Chet Day profile (Ward doesn't get all
>the press:-))

Sounds interesting...

>Happy to hear from you Kirt.  Maybe we will see each other :::::::::-)
>Going to Hawaii Jan 22nd through Feb 26th.

Let's double date. I want to go to a drive-in movie though, not the swami
point buddhist place on the coast near here :)

Have a coconut for me. Hell, have one for every one of the 100 or so
veg-raw subscribers...

Kirt (looking over my shoulder and under my collar for lunch rightousness:))