The famous roasted bird -> soup -> salata de boeuf transform

I'm sure you like to snack. So do I. I suspect so does everyone.

For which purpose you have the Pringles and the Hersheys, the whatsnots and the whatsits scattered all over the house ? That's how it goes in the modern household, from what I've seen so far : prepackaged industrial "foods" of sorts, stuff built on the alt-misogynistico-fantastic paradigm of TO-CE-HD.

The traditional household is somewhat different : there's not so much packaging because there's not so much factory-produced crap. Instead, the source of snacks in the traditional household are... leftovers! Some people even go so far as to deliberately design meals for the purpose of having leftovers, and then using those leftovers in other meals! I don't mean, feed the bread crumbs to the locally captive pig, to be eaten again as bacon later. I mean something more along the lines of :

Day 1. You... acquire (sometimes you buy, but generally you either shoot yourself or else barter with someone who has) a nice large bird in the morning. It could be a respectably sized duck, or a well fattened goose, or a turkey, or I suppose an ostrich though I've never tried that. You twist its neck if it's still alive, and scald, and pluck, and gut and roast this bird whole. Mmmm, rosemary.

That'll be either your lunch or dinner, depending on the local customs and your lord's inclinations that day. The roast is carved at the table, and the remainder, which is to say the carcass with all the meat that wasn't cut off, and perhaps the potatoes, asparagus or whatever other adequate veggies were left over go into the fridge for the

Day 2. You dump the whole carcass into a large pot full of boiling water. You let it boil until the meat nigh on comes off the bones by itself, at which point you add a coupla whole onions, some carrots, maybe some peas, laurel leaves, you know, things that go into soup. Three kinds of pepper, some salt, etcetera. If the bird was very fatty you can skim the soup. When you're just about ready to serve you add some pasta, or some rice, or both, depending on inclination.

This delicious soup is served with lemon, and perhaps sour cabbageⁱ on the side. The bones get either thrown away or offered to the dogs (if they're intelligent enough to not hurt themselves with boiled bird bones). The liquid, strained, is bottled and fridged, to be used later on (but not too much later) as a base for sauces. The meat that still escaped ingurgitation on this second day, apart from the bones as it finds itself now, is plated and fridged for

Day 3. You make mayo, out of raw eggs and olive oil. By hand. You boil some veggies (potatoes, peas, carrots, whatever else you like and in your estimation goes with this), you cut the meat into small bits, you mix it with the veggies, and you pour the mayo on top. Congratulations, you've just made what in Romanian is known as "salata de boeuf", which would be "beef salad" in two different languages, which makes absolutely no sense whatsoever because I've never seen it made out of anything but fowl.

This delicious spread goes exceedingly well on (homemade!) bread, allowing you to sandwich your whole way through the third day (and fourth, really, unless your fridge's broken).

So there you go, a short intro to "how to hunt twice a week and have food every day". The average 10kg bird will eat up about 10 eggs, 100ml of oil, 10 kgs worth of vegetables and roughly 10 hours of slavegirl time over the next three days (if they know what they're doing), producing a very respectable 100`000 to 150`000 calories or so when the trims are all counted in. That's enough to feed a small army, which is very advantageous, considering that's exactly what "traditional household" means in any practical sense : a small army.

Bon Apres-Tit!

1. Ideally you have a 200+ liter fermentation vat going in the cella, loaded cabbage salt and water, like civilised people. [↩]