{"id":12714,"date":"2011-10-23T12:00:33","date_gmt":"2011-10-23T19:00:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.survival-spot.com\/survival-blog\/?p=12714"},"modified":"2012-12-10T16:16:56","modified_gmt":"2012-12-10T23:16:56","slug":"jonathan-mcgowan-44-year-old-uk-man-lives-off-roadkill-for-30-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.survival-spot.com\/survival-blog\/jonathan-mcgowan-44-year-old-uk-man-lives-off-roadkill-for-30-years\/","title":{"rendered":"Jonathan McGowan, 44-Year-Old UK Man, Lives Off Roadkill For 30 Years"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"JONATHAN<\/a><\/p>\n

Rats, mice, foxes, owls, pigeons, moles, snakes and pheasants: the makings of a pleasant episode of Winnie the Pooh<\/em>, an autumnal diorama of woodland life at the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia — or, for one 44-year-old UK man<\/a>, 30 years worth of dinner.<\/p>\n

Jonathan McGowan<\/a>, a professional taxidermist, started eating roadkill at age 14, when he found a dead adder<\/a> on the side of the road and decided to cook it, reports the Daily Mail<\/em>. That first snake wasn’t very tasty, but he was intrigued. Over time, McGowan came to see the ecological and culinary benefits<\/a> of eating only meat he found dead on the side of the road. (It seems his forager-instincts were limited to the flesh: he would buy fruits, vegetables, grains, spice and so forth like any other person.)<\/p>\n

McGowan detailed the logistics of his diet<\/a> in a rollicking essay in The Guardian<\/em> last spring. He writes:<\/p>\n

Rabbits, badgers and pheasants are my most common finds. Rabbit is actually quite bland. Fox is far tastier; there’s never any fat on it, and it’s subtle, with a lovely texture, firm but soft. It’s much more versatile than beef, and has a salty, mineral taste rather like gammon. Frogs and toads taste like chicken and are great in stir-fries. Rat, which is nice and salty like pork, is good in a stir-fry, too \u2013 I’ll throw in celery, onion, peppers and, in autumn, wild mushrooms I’ve collected. Badger is not nice and hedgehog is hideous.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In a way, McGowan’s roadkill-centric diet is the logical terminus of a few recent strands of thought in the culinary world. He is at once a locavore forager in the tradition of Rene Redzepi<\/a>, a nose-to-tail carnivore like Fergus Henderson<\/a> and a freegan in the same vein as Gio Andollo<\/a>. (Never mind that he embarked on his unusual project decades before any of those figures rose to prominence.)<\/p>\n

McGowan doesn’t fess up to any negative consequences<\/a> of his roadkill diet, except for the occasional grimace from a friend or acquaintance. So if you’re feeling cavalier, eco-conscious and in the mood for meat the next time you see a deer carcass on the side of the highway, you might want to consider following his lead — at least after reading this guide to roadkill on Slashfood<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

McGowan’s story was featured on CNN Monday. Here’s the clip:
\n<\/object>
\n[Via HuffingtonPost.com<\/a>]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rats, mice, foxes, owls, pigeons, moles, snakes and pheasants<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[195,390],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12714","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","category-self-reliance"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.survival-spot.com\/survival-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12714","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.survival-spot.com\/survival-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.survival-spot.com\/survival-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.survival-spot.com\/survival-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.survival-spot.com\/survival-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12714"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.survival-spot.com\/survival-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12714\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.survival-spot.com\/survival-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12714"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.survival-spot.com\/survival-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12714"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.survival-spot.com\/survival-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12714"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}