Horse: Sashimi, Steak Tartar, Grilled & Soup

Last spring Judy and I traveled to Tokyo to take care of our granddaughter so that Rachael and Nate could do some traveling before they moved back to the U.S. Rachael knew that I wanted to try horse meat, so she found a restaurant nearby that served horse and arranged for a babysitter so that Judy and I could go and enjoy ourselves. What an adventure! It turned out to be one of my favorite meals ever.

The name of the restaurant was in Japanese characters, so we handed the name and address to our Japanese cab driver and he dropped us off in front. When we got out of the cab, we found that there were several restaurants and we could not tell which one it was. All of the restaurant names and advertisements were in Japanese and we couldn't any Japanese characters that looked similar to our instructions. So we walked down some stairs into a restaurant that looked like it might be it and were seated. The waiter handed us a menu, all in Japanese, and I asked if they "served horse meat." The waiter went to find another waiter that spoke a little English and we were able to determine that the restaurant we were in served only blowfish. But our waiter led us up several flights of stairs to another restaurant, spoke to the people there, and they seated us. The proprietor talked to the waiter that brought us up and apparently asked him to stay and serve us (it appeared that both restaurants may have had the same owner), so he brought us another menu, all in Japanese. We asked him what he recommended. He communicated to us that he would bring us a many course meal and we said great.

The first course was a bowl of soup with chunks of horse meat. I was surprised at the sweet taste of the horse in the soup. It was excellent.

The second course was a tray of horse sashimi (strips of raw horse). The Japanese call it basashi. There were three kinds: a dark red, a lighter red mottled with fat, and a pure white. The tray also had ginger, wasabi and shaved radish. The waiter explained that the pieces were from three different parts of the horse. The white part was from the mane (neck) and I have learned since that it was fat. There were three or four pieces of each kind of sashimi for each of Judy and I (the picture below was taken after we had eaten most of it). It was AMAZING. It had a slightly sweet taste and the red pieces were not much different in texture and taste from the very good fatty tuna sashimi we had tried. The white was not as good, but tasted fine.

Below, I eat some horse sashimi with chopsticks.

Next a Japanese speaking waitress brought in a small grill, called a yakiniku, and placed it on our table, along with a plate of horse sashimi and strips of mushroom and bell pepper. When the horse sashimi is cooked on the yakiniku it is called baniku ("horse meat") or bagushi ("skewered horse").

She proceded to grill the vegetables and meat on the grill and served them to us as they were cooked. The horse was very tender, slightly sweet and delicious.

Perhaps the most unusual dish, and the one mentally hardest to eat, was the steak tartar. It was ground raw horse, called sakuraniku (sakura means "cherry blossom" because of the pink color and niku means "meat") which looked like raw hamburger, with a raw quail egg on top, on a bed of rice, with chopped up scallions and covered with some seaweed. It also had a light sauce on top. We mixed it all together and ate it. It was my least favorite of the courses, partly because of the mental struggle I had to go through to eat it, but it was good.

The last course of horse was another soup. This soup had pieces of a thick yellow custard type substance, with chunks of horse meat, and was very creamy. It was delicious.

Finally, for dessert, we got some maple ice cream with pieces of kiwi fruit.

It was a very long meal, perhaps two hours, so Judy and I had plenty of time to chat. The whole set of circumstances, from being in a completely foreign world, with a foreign language, having each course be a total surprise, with an unusual food, and best of all, having it all taste so wonderful, made it the most memorable meal of my life.

Wikipedia, Horse Meat, has a great discussion of horse meat and its consumption around the world. Horse is commonly eaten in many countries, but is taboo in English speaking countries (the U.S., Canada, Australia, U.K. and Ireland). This is likely because they are considered to be companion and sporting animals only. Horse is forbidden by Jewish dietary laws because horses do not have cloven hooves and they are not ruminants. In the 8th century, Popes Gregory III and Zachary instructed Saint Boniface, missionary to the Germans, to forbid converts to eat horse flesh because it was associated with Germanic pagan ceremonies, so it has been discouraged in some countries because of that.

I am a convert. If it were available in the U.S., I would stand in line for it.

Great Horned Owls

Another of my favorite animals is the great horned owl. For the last 18 years we have lived on the edge of Live Oak Canyon in Redlands and often hear them hooting in the evening. Occasionally, we are blessed to have them perched in a tree near our home and may even be able to see their dark outlines in the dim light. On rare occasions, we will see them fly, their large wings flapping to keep their bulky bodies aloft. The evening we finished moving in to our home, there was a great horned owl perched in our neighbors tree, hooting, and I took that as a good omen.

The San Bernardino County Museum, located in Redlands, has a yearly exhibit of the winners of the federal duck stamp competition. Artists paint pictures of ducks and compete to see whose painting will be included on the duck stamp put on each waterfowl hunting license. Along with that exhibit, wildlife painters, photographers and bird wood carvers attend to show and sell their works of art. About five years ago, I was visiting the show and came across an artist whose work I really liked, Kevin Pack (http://www.kepackwatercolors.com/). I commissioned him to do a water color of a great horned owl for me, which now hangs on the wall in my law office and is also featured on his website ( http://www.kepackwatercolors.com/frame-set.html).

My uncle, Maynard Sorensen, is a wildlife woodcarver that used to attend shows like the one at the San Bernardino County Museum. When we lived in San Diego, he entered carvings in several shows there and I fell in love with his work. He has carved life-sized golden eagles and a life-sized California condor that is in a museum in Oregon. I commissioned him to carve a great horned owl for me. In a moment of serendipity, the same day I gave him the go-ahead on the carving, a young great horned owl was standing in the middle of the street, a few houses down from ours, as we were driving to church. I thought it might be hurt, but when I got out of the car, it flew away. A number of months later, when the carving was finished, I traveled to Maynard's home in southern Utah to pick it up. Below, he puts some finishing paint on the owl.

He holds the finished owl below. The wood it is standing on came from a walnut tree in Nauvoo, Illinois that was blown down in a windstorm.

We have the owl perched on a pedastal in our family room.

A close-up of the owl and stand.

A close-up of the amazing paint and carving detail in the neck and breast feathers.

A close-up of the face. The owl is carved out of tupelo, a very soft, light wood, obtained out of the swampland in the southern U.S.

Last year we were fortunate to have a pair of great horned owls nesting in our neighbors pine tree. The nest was very high in the tree and we could not see any young ones. But the owls were ever present and we heard nightly hooting, and even morning and early evening hooting. A picture of mom or dad in the pine tree below.

The best part happened one Sunday afternoon. Our neighbor knocked on our door to inform me that a young great horned owl had fallen out of the nest and was now hiding in the bushes in front of our house. The neighbor led me to the spot and, sure enough, beautiful yellow eyes peared up at me as I stared into the bushes.

As I tried to get closer for a picture, the young owl fluffed up her feathers and clicked her beak menacingly. If anyone had tried to pick her up, they would have head serious issues with her sharp beak and lethal claws.

But the most memorable part about her was those amazing yellow eyes.

She was in our bushes the remainder of the afternoon. We called a local pet shop that finds homes for homeless young birds, as we were afraid she might be killed by dogs or coyotes during the night. We were told that she would be okay. That the young birds commonly flutter to the ground for awhile before they get their flight wings and fly away. Later that evening, I went outside and she was gone. I looked all over the neigborhood and finally determined she must have flown away. I was sad, but also happy.

This spring, the owls are back. I'm hopeful they are raising some more young ones and that we might, once again, have an opportunity to view them at close range.

Mountain Goats

I have always had a fascination with mountain goats. Their unique spiky horns, their shaggy white coats, and their ability to climb seemingly sheer cliffs, make them a wonder to me. About 15 years ago I purchased a print drawing of a mountain goat mother and calf from a small shop in Ouray, Colorado, high in the Colorado Rockies.

The picture hung on the wall of my new law office in San Bernardino for about ten years. When we moved our law offices to Redlands, I was looking on ebay and found a mountain goat rug for sale. I purchased it and it went on my new office wall instead. The mountain goat picture was put in mothballs. I have seen lots of game rugs: mountain lion, bobcat, bear, etc, but never a mountain goat.

The coat is beautiful, but the hair is thick and very coarse. The tips of the horns are very sharp.

In August 1996, while hiking with Judy, my brother-in-law, Dave, and sister-in-law, Bonnie, to the summit of Mt. Timpanogas outside Provo, Utah, Dave and I went off the trail up in an area where we thought we might have seen some mountain goats. As we walked slowly, with Dave in front, I saw him staring at a herd of about 20 mountain goats. We got closer and closer and I eventually asked him, "when are you going to take a picture" (I didn't have my camera). He replied, "a picture of what?" It dawned on me that he didn't see the mountain goats right in front of us in a big patch of snow. He was quite startled when I pointed them out to him. They allowed us to get quite close. So close that the one nearest to us started to look agitated and I was afraid it might use us as pin cushions. We backed off, and got some pictures, but it was quite a thrill. The pictures below were taken by Dave.

Just last year, in July 2008, I went with Dave and his son, Matt, again to hike Mount Timpanogas. I was armed with a long, heavy 500 milimeter lense and tripod. I wanted to be able to get my own pictures of mountain goats on this trip. I was disappointed, on the way back down the mountain, that we had seen no goats. Then I spotted some way up on the mountain side. Fortunately, I had my powerfull lense and was able to get some photos. I particularly liked the one below of them scampering across a large patch of snow.
Mount Timpanogas may be my favorite hike anywhere. It is challenging, the scenery is spectacular, the wildflowers are amazing, there is abundant water, but best of all, there are moose, and even better, mountain goats, along the way.

In August 2010 I was in Colorado with Sam and Andrew and we drove to the top of 14,000+ foot Mount Evans. There we encountered quite a few mountain goats and were able to get very close to them. We saw several pairings of mother and kid,

a number of solitary goats,

and one large group of 29 goats just off the side of the road. One young kid was sitting on a dirt mound and then rolled around in the dirt.

The kids were quite captivating, very cute with more energy than their parents.

Most of the time they had their heads down searching for and eating grass. This little one looked like it was searching for something else.

This kid was near the parking lot near the summit.

There is so little vegetation where they are, it is hard to believe they can find enough to survive. They are truly hardy creatures. Very fun to get close to and observe.

In August 2013, while climbing Quandary Peak, outside Breckenridge, Colorado, I had several close encounters with mountain goats. I stopped and watched one, both on the way up and on the way down, as it ate grass very near the trail. Several hundred yards further, on the way down, I was within about 15 yards of a goat as it foraged on grasses. I saw another three goats in the distance.

Foraging on the mountainside with fog rolling in.

A different mountain goat, head down, going after grass.

Close-up of of moulting fur. 

Alligator: Grilled Sirloin

In June 2004, we flew into Baton Rouge and spent three or four days in southern Louisiana, including New Orleans, before driving to Memphis to spend time with Rachael and Nate. I had never eaten alligator and took every opportunity to order it as part of a meal while we were there. I probably had it 5 or 6 times in one form or another. I specifically remember having fried alligator as part of a cajun platter at Bayou Delight outside Houma and a spicy sausage "gator dog" after the Honey Island Swamp Tour. What I wanted, but could never get, was alligator that was not fried or spiced up so much that I couldn't tell what alligator really tasted like. Well, I just recently got my chance. I found alligator sirloin meat at Charlie Brown Farms (http://www.charliebrownfarms.com/).

The sirloin is primarily from the tail and has very little fat. As instructions for cooking virtually all low-fat meat go, you are supposed to cook it at a high temperature for a short period of time, rare or medium rare.

I put on a coat of olive oil and salt and put it on the outside gas grill on high.

It cooked quickly and was very different from what I expected.

The flesh had the look and firmness of lobster tail and was quite juicy.

It had a slightly fruity taste and was tender and light, particularly the thicker dark meat.

It was more white than chicken and I read the term "delicate" to describe it, which is an apt description. I cannot understand why they destroy it in Louisiana with breading and frying it. It is absolutely wonderful on its own. When I have an opportunity to cook more, I will cook it the same way and eat it with melted butter, just like lobster. The alligator tenderloin is an even better cut of meat, coming from the area next to the tail bone and spinal column. I would really like to try it now.

One description I read of the taste was a "cross between frog legs and turtle meat." Turtle meat is not even close and it is much better than frog.

Rattlesnakes: A Lifelong Interest

I have had an interest in rattlesnakes since I was a young boy. I grew up on the edge of City Creek Canyon in Salt Lake City. When perhaps 6 or 7, I encountered a rattlesnake that slithered under a large boulder near a new house being built across the street from my own home. I spent a long time trying to coax the snake out from under the rock with a stick and was devastated when I went back, several hours later to try again, when a workman told me he had killed it to prevent me from getting hurt. During summer school between fifth and sixth grades, my Lowell Elementary School class took field trips up City Creek Canyon with Howard Rogers. We caught and killed two rattlesnakes that summer. Steven Gould and I skinned the snakes and my mother cooked the first one for our class. Later that summer, while camping at Lake Powell, my brother Layne, and cousin, Scott Sorensen, killed a rattlesnake near our camp and we cooked it. I was looked to as the expert to skin it. In sixth grade, Steven Gould took me to Hogle Zoo where he knew someone who worked in the reptile house. This person let us hold one of the rattlesnakes that was tame. It was rattling while we held it, but it did not bite. I'm sure the zoo management had no idea this was going on!

As an adult in the outdoors, I have had many experiences with rattlesnakes. In July 1992, while on an early morning walk in our canyon, I discovered a 5 1/2 foot red diamond rattlesnake which I killed and brought home to eat and skin.

In March 1993, I caught a young red diamond rattlesnake up Whitewater Canyon with the kids and brought it home and put it in an acquarium (Judy happened to be visiting family in Utah for three days - otherwise this never would have happened). The kids were quite excited. We put the acquarium up on the kitchen counter so we could get a good view of it. Rachael named it White Fang.

At church the next day, the kids announced to their friends that we were having an open house for those who wanted to visit our house and see our snake. Rachael made a visitor sign-in sheet for those to sign who came over. Predictably, when Judy got home Sunday night, there was some incredulity expressed and the snake's presence in our home was cut short. We had a family home evening Monday night which consisted of driving back to Whitewater Canyon to let the snake go where I had caught it.

Later that year, in October 1993, Sam discovered a speckled rattlesnake at Joshua Tree National Park, in Hidden Valley, on a visit with our family and his grandmother Kenison, and her German friend, Ebbie.

Sam and I also rescued a young Great Basin rattlesnake on a sand bar in the middle of the Paria River in Southern Utah. We kept it safe through the cold night and let it go to safety in the warmth of the next day.

In the spring of 1999, Andrew and I caught a sidewinder rattlesnake near Snow Creek, outside of Palm Springs, one evening.

I put it in a plastic bucket in the trunk of the car and discovered, when I got home, that the lid had fallen off. The snake was loose in my car for a week. The discovery of that snake is a story for a later post.

In my offices, at work and home, I have several tacky rattlesnake trinkets. The first one I purchased in San Diego and it has been on my work desk for many years.

I purchased the one below from an artist in Hurricane, Utah. It also has been on my office desk for a number of years.

The one below is particularly tacky. I purchased it last year in Gila Bend, Arizona, on my way to Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument. It is in my home study. I think the round hole in the middle is for a drink cup or something, I'm not really sure.

I purchased this clay pot near Mata Ortiz, Mexico, several years ago, which has a rattlesnake design on it. It is in my home office.

Last summer, I discovered a small rattlesnake stretched out in our driveway on a Sunday afternoon, right next to the driver-side door of my car.

With the help of a neighbor, I picked it up and took it into the field near our home to let it go. This was the first rattlesnake I'd fully held since the one at Hogle Zoo many years ago (although I did not hold the one at Hogle Zoo behind the head, it could have bit me at any time).

About four years ago, I was snake hunting one evening with Jim Sullivan. We had a particularly productive night. We caught two sidewinder rattlesnakes in the Snow Creek area, and a lyre snake and a red diamond rattlesnake in Whitewater Canyon. I have always wanted a pet rattlesnake and this seemed like the right time (our kids had now left home) and the right snake (red diamond rattlesnakes have a mellow disposition). "Red," the red diamond rattlesnake, has grown from a small snake to a medium-sized snake, over three feet long. The pictures of Red, below, were taken in September 2007.

Red's home is an aquarium in our garage. He hibernates from about October to March or April each year. He sheds three or four times a year and last year lost most of his rattles after a shed. He initially ate small mice and now I feed him large rats. For Christmas, Rachael and my tolerant wife, purchased two "snake" sticks for me: to allow me to more safely deal with Red as he is getting larger. Red has just recently come out of hibernation and Saturday was the first day of this year I was going to feed him. So I pulled him out his aquarium and let him slither in the back yard for a short while. Then I held his head down...

and picked him up for the first time.

I bought him a large rat and I was not sure he would eat it, as it was the first feeding of the year and he'd had a traumatic afternoon. I was excited when I came home Saturday evening and found Red with a big lump in his body. We're off to a good start for this year.