Dining Out For Life
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Dining Out For Life
If you only dine out once in March, please do so on Thursday, March 25th, 2010!
Seal meat on the menu. Gotta get me some flipper pie.
She smiled when I stopped her to ask the question, "Have you tried seal meat before?"
It was the question of the day for me Tuesday afternoon in the lead up to today's event at the Parliamentary Restaurant where seal meat will be on the menu. So there was Megan Leslie, the New Democrat MP from Halifax giving me a primer on eating seal meat, "it's gamey."
Now to stereotype, Ms. Leslie looks like the type of young woman who, were she from Toronto, would eschew any meat and have answered my question with an explanation on the benefits of a vegetarian diet. Thankfully Ms. Leslie is no stereotype. So, yes, she tried seal on a trip to the Magdalen Islands and found it better than she expected, "I thought it would be fattier, you know when you think of marbled beef. But the fat is on the outside; you know the blubber layer to keep them warm. So I thought it would be fatty but it was quite lean. But it was gamey, gamey is the word I would use."
Just a few steps away, still in the foyer of the House of Commons I stop Liberal MP Scott Simms from Newfoundland who becomes wistful as I ask him about the taste of seal meat, "They tell me, there is nothing better than flipper pie and a glass of Chianti."
Simms agrees with Leslie that the taste of seal is gamey and he adds that seal is an acquired taste, "but one worth acquiring." So what would I be acquiring if I try seal meat in the Parliamentary Restaurant? Is this like chicken, beef, fish? A good question says Simms, "More like rabbit," he says. "A dark meat, it's very rich, very filling."
Now, I stopped and spoke with east coast MPs because, those are the people that would have tried this meat. Not everyone is a fan though. Gail Shea, the Fisheries Minister may defend the seal hunt but in no way does she sound like she enjoys eating seal meat, "It depends on how it's processed. There is a type of seal meat that is made into a pepperoni. If you ate the pepperoni, I don't think you could taste the difference if it were seal meat or another type of meat." Okay, so minister, do you like seal meat? "I like pepperoni," says Shea.
That's okay though, you don't need to like eating seal, that's not the point of this exercise MPs and Senators are taking part in today. No, today is about Canadian politicians thumbing their noses at Europeans and animal activists. The European Union has put in a ban on Canadian seal products. Sure they may have bought them for hundreds of years but now, they think it is mean and cruel and they are trying to force Canada to stop.
The EU is backed in this push by animal rights activists including celebrities and radical groups like PETA who would prefer that no animal were ever killed again and that everyone turn to a vegetarian diet.
A full discussion of the merits, or demerits, of the seal hunt will have to wait for another day, I'll only say the cute little white coat seal pups you see in posters are not hunted, it's not allowed. Beyond that the arguments will have to wait, I have to get in line at the restaurant to see what all this fuss is about, I expect a long wait.
Cancel NAFTA? American lawmakers look to rip up trade deal
In an election year, American politicians look to stay in power by closing the border.
