I broke my ankle on Super Bowl Sunday because I slipped on the ice in my driveway while bringing in the groceries and bidding on wrestling cards on my phone at the same time. It was an embarrassing accident, to say the least, one that kept me at home on the couch, unable to drive myself to work, make dinner, or go up and down the stairs by myself.
I hadn’t left the house in over a week, until my partner took pity on me and drove me around our neighborhood like an old, wounded dog about to get put to sleep. Our mailman saw me as I struggled to get out of the car, comically large orthopedic boot on my right leg, crutches wedged in my armpits.
“Are you ok?” he asked. I told him I broke my ankle and the mailman told me that Joe Rogan recommends I eat deer meat. “Lots of deer meat,” he said, “because deer are fast and have more protein,” unlike slovenly pigs and cows, he added, and eating deer meat would heal my broken bone faster. He claimed he once had a broken hand that his doctor told him would take six months to heal, but he ate lots of deer meat and was better in three, then he told me which of my neighbors had ring cameras, and which would be easier to have packages stolen off their porch.
“Thanks, I’ll try the venison,” I said, tucking away his suggestion to rip-off my neighbors, and was reminded of my mother, who treated her bulimia-induced anemia by eating liverwurst and braunschweiger sandwiches (for the iron, of course). I hadn’t gone deer hunting since I was sixteen and I wasn’t sure I could even find deer meat where I lived, aside from fetid piles of roadkill or the occasional bag of venison jerky, but I suddenly had a craving for succulent, milk-fed veal.
When I was a kid, my favorite food was veal parmesan, so rich and morally dubious, but I never had it homemade, despite my mother’s Italian roots. Every once in a while, my mom would splurge and buy a tray of frozen Stouffer’s Veal Parmigiana, and it made any meal feel like a bacchanal.
One time, my step-grandparents took me and my little brother out for lunch at Country Kitchen and told us we could order anything we wanted on the menu. My step-grandparents ordered ribeye steak and onions, well done, with pools of Hunt’s ketchup, my brother chicken tenders, and I, the adopted bastard, didn’t hesitate to order the veal parmesan. Upon hearing my order, my Scandinavian step-grandmother scanned the laminated menu and recoiled, “The most expensive thing on the menu,” and my fat face burned with shame.
“I’m not cooking venison,” my partner said as she helped me hobble up the front stairs, and I asked, “Well, do you think Stouffer’s still makes a veal parmesan?”
Josh Olsen is a librarian, a columnist for SlamWrestling.net, and the co-creator of Gimmick Press.
Back Patio Press 