Carcass

As a Substitute Teacher, often I am left with seat work to give to the students or an entire day of watching "Osmosis Jones" with every junior high science class.  Ugh.  Unless the teacher has requested me directly, I am rarely left with anything interesting to actually teach the students.

However, I was requested by the teacher for today and she left me to teach a lovely lesson on "The Parts of the Carcass".

I am vegetarian.  I can tell you where the leg of an animal is, or maybe their eyeball, but the butchered carcass parts?  No.

Once upon a time, I was not vegetarian.  I loved eating meat, even finding ways to eat meat during breakfast, but my knowledge of the parts of a carcass did not go past "steak".

Fortunately, when I entered the classroom, my demo carcass was merely a marker drawing on whiteboard, rather than an actual carcass.  I assumed an actual carcass would be my demo and everyone could have fun chopping the bits of the poor animal and naming them.  I admit, I was slightly disappointed at the whiteboard drawing.  A real carcass brought nostalgic memories of when I was a child and my Dad would go hunting every autumn (he continues to do so).  One year, for whatever reason, and to my Mom's horror, he had it in his head that he was going to take the carcasses home and butcher then with a friend in our basement.  There, from the rafters in the basement ceiling, hung a deer from its front legs.  My brothers and I found the entire ordeal fascinating and would spend nearly every moment sitting on the huge freezer which was within touching distance of one of the deer carcasses.  We became bored sitting there and just staring at the thing, so I made up a game.  Nearly all of the games I made up had a dare involved and this game was along the same lines.  I challenged my brothers to a contest of who could stick their head in the ribcage of the deer without touching the sides.  I won, of course.

Despite my experience with carcasses, I still had no idea the names of the butchered parts.  So, lesson plan in my shaky hand, I approached the whiteboard.  Oh, by the way, it had now been properly labelled thanks to the Foods 30 student that helped out in that class.  Somehow, I was still convinced I would give each part the wrong name and the pathetic Foods 10 students would fail their carcass test.   Really, there was nothing to be concerned with because the students were clever enough to find ways to remember the correctly named body parts.  "Shank" quickly became "skank".  The "head", well, I will keep this on the PG side of things.

To wrap this up, I will give you a fast and yummy after school snack recipe that I made my girls today and has nothing to do with a carcass.

1 pkg Raincoast Crisps (or whatever crackers you prefer/have around the house)
1 Camembert or Brie cheese
1 jar of carrot marmalade (or any other orange-y or apricot spread)

Cut the layer of rind off of the top of the cheese.  Place cheese in a small pan and spread marmalade over the top (3 or 4 tablespoons should suffice).    Place in toaster oven (or large oven if you haven't a small one) and bake at 350 F for about 5 - 10 minutes, just enough for the cheese to soften and just start to bubble.  Serve with crackers.  YUM!