Month: January 2016

by Josh Evans and Guillemette Barthouil It must have been in the spring of 2013 when one of our hunters, Jesper Shytte, brought on board a beast none of us had ever worked with in the kitchen. Late April and early May, he told us, was the best time to hunt beaver, and he had brought us one, along with its castor sac and a sample of castoreum tincture he had made. We cooked the tail for staff meal (it takes some finesse, we later learned; Jesper has since offered to show us how) after immediately popping the castor sac into 70% ethanol to make tincture our own. Castoreum is the secretion of the castor sacs of the Eurasian and North American beaver (Castor fiber and Castor canadensis, respectively), which they mix with urine to mark their territory. Beavers have been valued for centuries in Europe and North America for their … Read more

by Anna Sigrithur and Meradith Hoddinott In the quest to obtain sensory pleasures, the seeker sometimes puts ethics aside. This conundrum is especially true when it comes to food and eating. But what if taste could help us participate in flourishing ecologies by attuning us to when and how best to eat certain organisms? The answer is complicated, in part by our human tendency to assign value unevenly to different organisms—a phenomenon aptly described as ‘non-human charisma’ (Lorimer, 2007). In this episode, we explore how non-human charisma colours the tension between deliciousness and conservation. Our main story takes us to the Danish island of Bornholm in the Baltic sea, the site of a troubling drama between cod, local fisherman, a lot of worms, and an overpopulation of protected grey seals. But first, we take you back up into Sápmi where, for Sami reindeer herders, the endangered golden eagle is less majestic treasure, more economic … Read more