Last week I was hanging with some friends for several days, working on some stuff. At one point, we had a conversation about eating meat vs. being a vegetarian, and the conversation shifted to wild game (rabbit, deer, turtle, frog legs, etc.). My father used to cook a lot of that stuff when I was a kid, and as a result, I have a palate that favors game (hell, meat in general). I’m an incorrigible carnivore. Turns out a couple of other people in the room were as well. All of us were pretty unapologetic about it. In L.A.—The Land That Food Forgot—finding another meat-eater is like being reunited with a long-lost family member. You cling. You coo. You barbecue.

Well, I happen to love to cook, and I’m also pretty darn good at it. It comes from possessing a true admiration for cooking as a form of creative expression. And I can make anything. Seriously. So I decided that, since we were gathering again the following day, I’d (literally) pull a rabbit out of my deep freezer and fry it up, down-home style, along with some homemade buttermilk biscuits, onion gravy, and a nice long-grain rice (I know I should have made a vegetable, but it was a last minute decision to make any of it). I surprised everyone when I arrived with the food. Folks immediately went for plates and began diving into it.

…except for one person, a guy who hemmed and hawed about having never had rabbit before (although he did go a bit too far and freaked all of us out by confessing he had eaten RAT once. What the?????). Anyway, so he fixes himself a little plate. Puts a piece of rabbit on it, spoons on a bit of gravy, SPRINKLES RICE ON TOP OF IT (?????) like the rice was coconut or something, and grabbed a biscuit. This is what his plate looked like:

My biscuits are very delicate and tender, and he kind of manhandled it, that’s why it looks all crumbly on his plate.

So he heats the food in the microwave, approaches it with semi-disdain, takes a bite, and immediately proceeds to wolf through everything. Gnawed that rabbit down to dried bone, he did. Ate the biscuit out the frame (then, proceeded to have SEVEN MORE BISCUITS—I only made twelve; a small skirmish broke out over his sucking down of the biscuits; I actually had to make him another batch and bring them the next day, he went so nuts over them).

I say all this to say, Hey you…the next time I bring some food, don’t question me, okay? I’m a professional. I know what I’m doing. You just sit your iz-azz down at the table and do what?

Okay?

Okay.