I'm THAT Mom - the one of Hillbilly Recipes

Kellyn, you may not want to read this.

Every morning that I drop the boys off at school, a troop of boys come out to greet me at S2's classroom.  I love it.  There are four of them total, including my S2.  S3 and S4 make a big deal out of giving all four them high fives and hugs that are so big they can lift them up off the ground - yes, my six and seven year old lifting their older brother and friends up off the ground in a hug.

Only my boys.

Anyhow, recently Jonathan - one of the four - actually stopped me before the morning greetins.  "Can you tell me how to make squirrel?" he asked.

Now, there are lots of things running through my mind but the biggest was this...

I have officially become a hillbilly.

Jonathan continued...and this I loved..."Because my mom says she doesn't know how to cook it and I know you do so you could tell her how to cook it and then we could finally eat some!"

I know Jonathan's mom...and I'm sorry...I just couldn't resist.  "Well, honey, you just get that squirrel as clean as you and your brothers can then you have your mom stick it in the crock pot with a bunch of cream of mushroom soup and cook it till it's tender."

His eyes were adoring.  He was thrilled.

"Great!" he nodded solemnly.  "Can you tell my mom that?"

"I sure will," I promised.

I did not, however, tell his mom - or Jonathan - that when one cooks squirrel like that it ends up looking like this.......

Yummy, huh?

No matter how carefully it is cleaned, when it is done cooking you will in fact find bits of hair still on it's cooked meat.

And that your boys, looking at that tiny bit of meat that doesn't even take up half a dinner plate, will think it is the best looking dinner ever.  

They will carefully carve off bits of the meat and savor every bite, pronouncing they have the best cook in the whole world and their brother to be the best shot.  And the cook (being the mother) will do the motherly thing and make sure all her boys have all the food they can eat - sacrificing her share of the meat to the hunter who provided the meat.

The funny thing is THE WEEK this happened to me - Jonathan asking me about how to cook squirrel - another friend sent me a picture of her son eating...SQUIRREL.  She knew I would appreciate such a picture...and understand her horror.

When the weekend was over, I asked Jonathan how it had gone eating his squirrel.  "Well," he said, "My mom says we would need a whole lot of squirrels to feed us all so it may take some time.  But then we'll make it like how you told my mom!"