Snapper's Delight

I'm working on a couple of pieces for an upcoming taxidermy competition, one of which involves a fish.  Any excuse to buy a decent snapper, right?  I was excited to sweep this beauty up at the local fine foodery; the fish monger seemed perplexed that I didn't want him to fillet it or anything but I like to think that gives me some foodie cred.







The skinning was a snap;  I packed up the dermis in the freezer to use later and got to work on creating a snapper stew.  The meat was cut into small chunks and I saved the head and bones to use in a fish stock later.  As for the stew, it was probably simplest meal I've made while still being palatable ( I don't have the best track record in the kitchen).  In fact, it was a hit!  I cannot sing the praises of my crock pot enough.



Snapper Stew:



1 1/2 pound red snapper fillets -- cut in 2" pieces

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 clove garlic -- minced

1 large onion -- sliced

1 green pepper -- cut in 1" pieces

1 zucchini squash -- unpeeled & sliced

15 ounces whole tomatoes

1/2 teaspoon leaf basil

1/2 teaspoon leaf oregano

1 teaspoon salt

1/8 teaspoon pepper

1/4 cup dry white wine

1/2 cup fresh mushrooms -- optional



Literally throw it all in the pot and keep it on low setting for six hours.







Then serve to friends and dazzle them with your culinary prowess!  I wanted to get some feasting shots but the stew was gobbled up too fast!

Squab, anyone?

I recently obtained a pigeon to complete a custom order for a client who dreamed up an angel-like tree topper for the upcoming holiday season.  I'm just about finished that piece but in the meantime here is what I did with the pigeon squab meat:

Potrawka Z Golebi (Polish Squab)  Pigeons Butter 3 Onions 1 c Meat stock 2 Tart apples 3 Mushrooms 1 Lemon; juice of 1 sm Glass of Madeira wine 1 tb Butter 1 tb Flour 1 c Sour cream Quarter the pigeons; Saute in butter for 15 minutes. Remove from butter and slice three onions into pan.  Fry onions until done. Add meat stock, sliced apples, mushrooms, and lemon juice. Mix well and bring to boiling point. Add wine. In another pan, brown flour in butter and thicken the mixture. Dip pigeons in sour cream, return to mixture and cook until tender.

Quite delicious, and nutritious!

Bunny Cheese

I recently received a fresh baby bunny from a friend.  Apparently her pet rabbit's litter was naturally thinning itself out,  or her cat snuck into the nursery.  Either one.  Regardless, look how cute!







Needless  to say, my friend was crest fallen.  She just wanted me to take the specimen off her hands.  I couldn't stop marveling at how adorable this little guy was.  I've only seen creatures this sweet in Disney movies.







I hope I can do him justice in the final mounting stage.  Such petite faces are still a challenge for me, especially when I'm trying to capture just how precious it is.  I'm still not entirely sure what type of mount this will become but it has to be very very special.



Skinning him was delicate, as expected, and I accidentally punctured the dermis several time due to man handling. It's nothing I can't sew up but what really threw a wrench in the gears was this little guy's stomach and its contents.  I always try not to cut through the skin and into the guts because it's never a non-mesy affair, but sometimes the skin is so thin I can't help it.  Plus, the bunny's belly was bloated and kind of in the way.  As I worked the skin off the side, the pressure forced some of the contents of the stomach out and I almost dry heaved.



It looked like ricotta cheese:



* not actual contents because I was too grossed out to think of getting a shot.  But it looked JUST LIKE THIS.



The stomach puncture was like an exploding zit and there seemed to be no way of avoiding all the white puss splooging out onto my work table.  The amount of it was shocking to me and I squealed as I wiped it up with towel after towel.  Shortly though, I noticed that there was no odor.  If this were some sort of massive infection; the equivalent of a zit or cyst (full of dead white blood cells), then it would've stunk like halitosis.  Or like death, at the very least.  However, there was no such scent.  I calmed down a bit and allowed my nose to take in some of it.



Ricotta.  It actually smelled like ricotta cheese. How bizarre  But then I thought about it- it was a baby, the stomach likely full of mother's milk (quite full, I might add, that this little piggy was a piggy) and had maybe somehow curdled during digestion.  Out of curiousity I looked up ricotta cheese and how to make it online.  Sure enough, many cheeses are made with a complex of enzymes known as Rennet which is found in the stomachs of calves.  According to Wikipedia:



Rennet (pronounced /ˈrɛnɪt/) is usually a natural complex of enzymes produced in any mammalian stomach to digest the mother's milk, and is often used in the production of cheese. Rennet contains many enzymes, including a proteolytic enzyme (protease) that coagulates the milk, causing it to separate into solids (curds) and liquid (whey). The active enzyme in rennet is called chymosin or rennin (EC 3.4.23.4) but there are also other important enzymes in it, e.g., pepsin or lipase. There are non-animal sources for rennet that are suitable for vegetarian consumption.



Fear not, vegetarians!  Mass produced cheese is made from alternate methods these days  and the only folks still using sheep and cow stomach are for the most part artisan cheese makers in Europe.  Also, I don't think cheese was ever made inside of the animal's stomach as the method described in the Wiki article states that stomaches were cut up and soaked in a brine of sorts, with the raw milk.



Hmmm.  If I'd had my wits about me I would've saved it and tasted the first ever sample of in-stomach-curdled-rabbit-ricotta!



Or at least fed some to my cats.

Bits and Pieces

I spent a full day in my studio working on some different projects, one of which was the very special canine.  While I had skinned the dog a couple weeks ago, I didn't have a chance to thoroughly get down to it so I had to stash the skin in the freezer for a bit.  Yesterday I thawed it out and got down to degreasing.  I was reminded of my racoon experience, with the amount of fat I had to scrape off.  I don't want to get too graphic because this dog was loved by people so deeply, but after working on the pelt for almost five hours I feel like I may have developed a Popeye forearm from the repetitive and forceful motion the degreasing process requires.



Alas, it is done and now the future work of art is resting in a tanning solution.



After that was finished I moved onto a small rabbit I'd skinned a while ago.  Sometimes I'll do a crude skinning of a specimen and then freeze the pelt just to free up some room in the icebox. This basically involves just getting the carcass out.  Later on I'll go back and scrape the fat, split the ears, nose and lips, etc.  Splitting ears on small mammals takes finesse and patience.  See how delicate this is?  That dark thing is my tool inside the ear.







The goal is to separate the front and back tissues of the ear.  After the skin is treated, a firm material is placed in side the ear to keep its shape.



 



I skinned two squirrels to fill an order for a client and froze the pelts.  I salted the meat in the fridge over night and this morning threw it all in the crock pot for some slow cooking.  Were this for me, I would've marinated it for a couple days however the dish I was creating would be for my cats.  I've been playing around with making my own cat food for some time now; usually I'll just feed them scraps of whatever we have, but I've never actually made a whole mixture.  I read a rant in one of the local weeklies. years ago, about how keeping cats as pets is one for the least environmentally friendly things one could do. The author came off as a bit unhinged but the idea always stuck with me; that I was using can after can after can and feeding my little guys fish and chicken raised and processed who knows where/how.  I have a friend who made his own food after his cat was diagnosed with cancer and she lived well past the vat's predicted expiration date.  I've been reading The Natural Cat and followed the basic recipe's amount for protein, veggies and starches.  I mixed the squirrel with some quinoa and pureed garbanzo beans, and will add vitamins later as well as some pureed carrots.  Here is the almost finished product, though, and I let the boys sample it already.  They both seemed very, very happy.

Man's best friend

I've never owned a dog, yet I feel a connection with them which compels me to stop at dog parks and slobber at the sight of the happy creatures leaping and bounding, exploding with happiness.  When a friend contacted me recently to inform  me about a friend of his whose dog had just passed, and would I be interesting in collecting the body, I jumped at the chance.  The dog, 14-year-old black and white rat terrier, died in her sleep on Saturday and I picked her up on Sunday.  It was a most unusual way to meet someone but the owner, a lovely woman with two children and a chef husband, was graceful and composed so I followed her lead.  The dog was on her deck, on ice and in a blanket.  I kept her in the bags and then loaded her into a large IKEA carrier sac for transport.  I had imagined that the specimen would be much smaller but when the weight and size of this one hit me, it became apparent I had to take a cab home.  Slouched in the back seat of a taxi, I leaned against my cargo and caught a whiff of some early decomposition odor.  Still hung over from the night before, the smell made me gag a bit and I wondered just how infuriated the driver would be if he knew what I'd brought into his car.  At moments like this it hits me, how bizarre and twisted my little world might appear from the outside.  So much of my time is spent retrieving dead things and carting them around in my messenger bag, then stashing them in my freezer.  Sometimes I wonder if there are hundreds of little ghosts drifting around the house that make my cats go bananas.  To some, I'm sure this seems sick.  However, this is my normal, and I simply forget that people might see me as a very disturbed individual until quiet times like this in which I occupy a tight space with a dead dog I've never met and a man driving  a cab who I'll most likely never meet again.



It turns out there was no room in the freezer for Pooch so I skinned her upon getting home.  The enormity of what I was about to do didn't hit me until I pulled her out of the bag.



Her collar was still on.



I started weeping and just stared at her, wondering if I could do it.  I get teary and cry a bit with almost every animal I skin, but this was different.  It was if I could feel all the love which had been poured into this creature for the last 14 years, and the profound role this four-legged little girl had had with her humans became clear.  I fondled  the paw pads a bit, imagining them padding around the wooden floor just a few days before.  I was a little bit afraid she wasn't completely dead (I always am, it's my worst fear that I'll make an initial cut and suddenly my specimen will come back to life, panicked and crazed) but the bloat in her stomach made it quite clear.  I burned some incense, said my little prayer and got to skinning.







It was an intense, emotionally wrought experience.  One interesting part was when I came across what I'm guessing is a tracking device that was implanted between the shoulder blades.  Aside from that, nothing too different from skinning a coon or a fox.  After I had the carcass completely separated, I marveled at how we're all just skins.  No one would ever recognise this naked corpse as a beloved pet.







For reference, this is a picture of the breed which I worked with.  Out of respect for the dog and her owners I chose not to take any pictures of the corpse.  I got my measurements and that's all I needed.  I hope to do her justice.

Special Delivery

I've been crafting a custom hairpiece for a very special gal the last couple weeks, in my spare time. I should've had it done by Sunday but I was given a unique specimen which was too large and too precious to keep in the freezer so I chose to put all other activities on hold so I could skin this...wonderful creature.  Full story to come shortly.  In the meantime, I was told by my client that she wanted a hairpiece for a gal pal of hers who enjoys wearing, of all things,ducks on her head.



What I want to know is, how have I not met this woman and if/when we do, will we both implode from the sheer weight of our shared sense of high fashion?



Her friend gave me a time and price range and we worked out this little ditty right here:







Sorry for the shadowy picture but I'll beg her to let me borrow it later to get a professional shot for my website.  I mounted a squirrel head onto the kind barette which is held into place with a stick driven through the hair.  Technically it's a bun holder but they work just fine for ponys and half ponys.  The squirrel was embellished with some jewelry and feathers, while his feet wound up dangling from the stick part.



 







 







Creating wearables seems to be more and more the direction which makes most sense for me.  Art is so much more accessible when you have it on your head!

Truly Outrageous

I've been buried in work and too busy making real life to make blog posts.  Now I just don't even know where to start. I have three new pieces and a newish one currently showing at the Vincent Michael Gallery in Philadelphia.  The fancy chicken, the squirrels, everything I've been working on has led to this.  And I could kick myself because i worked on them up until the last second and have not a single picture to show for my work.  That will have to come later, along with stories/though processes, for anyone who's interested in that type of thing.



The day of my opening, I wore a new head-piece to the Devon Dressage show to enter in the Ladies hat contest.  Here's a little video montage of how the day went:







And here is my victory lap:







From there I headed to the gallery opening which was a smashing success.  If I could ever say there was a day when I felt like Cinderella, that was it.  I didn't want the wonderful experience to end, but I grew quite sleepy at 9pm and overwhelmed by the social activity so I retreated to my neighborhood bar where I enjoyed a White Russian with my husband and called it an evening.



Currently I'm working on a custom piece for a client who found me via a site which promotes this blog, Swellco&Swellco.  They're unusual people but I love them dearly.  I've also got a custom order for a boxing squirrel.



A more extensive update with pictures to follow.