August 11, 2023 • 42 mins
This poultry has taken a dive in popularity in some places, but it's still considered a delicacy in others. Anney and Lauren swoop through the agriculture and history behind squab (i.e., young pigeon).
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Speaker 1 (00:09):
Hello, and welcome to Save your Protection of iHeartRadio. I'm
any Reason and.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
I'm more on Vocal Bomb, and today we have an
episode for you about squab.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
Squab, which is real fun to say squab squab. Why
was there any reason this was on your mind?
Speaker 2 (00:26):
I was trying to think of a protein that maybe
wasn't a seafood because I feel like the last couple
that we've done have been seafoods, and I didn't feel
like getting into anything bigger than this topic, so that
this was just a nice, manageably sized topic, much like
(00:47):
the bird itself.
Speaker 1 (00:48):
Indeed, indeed, and it is fascinating. I learned a lot
of stuff I was not anticipated on this one. Yes, yes,
in fact thought part of this was a myth. So
it's gonna be fun to go over. I have had squab, yeah,
(01:09):
I remember specifically. I've had it twice. Okay, once was
at a friend restaurant in New Orleans, Share and it
was delicious. It was very decadent. And once my grandfather,
who I don't know, I didn't know this was a
(01:31):
thing back then, but he was very into food. Like
he he was involved in the cooking. He loved like
branching out. Oh it's awesome. Yeah, like he really I
guess with him, you had like a couple of things
that he would cook often, but there were a lot
of times he was just like, I just want to
(01:52):
try something new, I want to do this. And I
think a lot of my kind of extravertedness I associate
with him because a lot of times that is you
just want to try something new. Yeah, yeah, even if
like you've had the thing before, but you haven't cooked
it before, you cooked it in this way before. And
(02:13):
he cooked it once when I was young, but it
was delicious, But I remember thinking the bones were such
a pain. That's like my strongest I remember thinking it
was really good, but like I was a kid, and
I was.
Speaker 2 (02:30):
Like, you're like bones, are there so many of them?
Speaker 1 (02:33):
Right? Yeah? Sure, yeah, I don't.
Speaker 2 (02:37):
I don't think i've ever had it.
Speaker 1 (02:39):
Oh well, it is quite good.
Speaker 2 (02:43):
I'm yeah, I'm really mad at myself now, I don't.
I don't think I've ever encountered it on a menu.
I can't remember ever seeing it in in a grocery store,
which probably just speaks to the modern lack of popularity
(03:06):
that we're going to talk about.
Speaker 1 (03:08):
For a lot of this episode. Yes, and also expensiveness.
Oh sure that's true. Yeah, the price because my grandfather
had the money to get so, I will say, and
it's quite expensive. So yeah. I in thinking about this,
I guess like related topics would be duck. We haven't
(03:32):
done chicken half I would remember that break my brain.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
I I've been avoiding chicken because I'm like, we're going
to need to break that up, Like that's that's too much.
Speaker 1 (03:42):
Yeah, we've done like associated like chicken nuggets. Right, we've
done stuff related, but yeah, that's a.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
Not today chicken.
Speaker 1 (03:57):
Chicken. But squab I must come, yes, which I guess
brings us to rock question. Squab What is it? Well?
Speaker 2 (04:11):
Squab is the culinary term for pigeon, specifically young pigeon
harvested before they start flying. It's a dark, rich tasting,
and slightly gamy kind of meat, sort of like duck
or goose, but the fact that they're harvested young means
that they're more tender than those other birds. Squab is
often broken down into breasts and legs and then grilled
(04:33):
or roasted to like a rare to medium kind of
temperature to highlight that tenderness. Though it can also be
simmered and then deboned, and the meat used in savory
pies or in stews or what have you. It's like
a tiny tender duck or like a larger, richer quail.
It's like if a chicken were all dark meat. Again,
(04:57):
I haven't had it, but I get the idea that
it's sort of like a platonic ideal of poultry.
Speaker 1 (05:05):
Yeah, you're kind of describing like the Goldilocks, Like, yeah,
so it's a good like middle yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:13):
Oh man man, okay, all right. So pigeon. When I
say pigeon, the idea that you probably have in your
head of like a like a gray bird with a
couple darker bands on its wings and a little bit
of like a greenish or purplish sheen around its throat.
(05:33):
That is a type of wild bird called a common
pigeon or rock pigeon or rock dove. A squab comes
from long domesticated versions of rock pigeons that can have
a whole range of coloration from snowy white to reddish
brown to sooty black in all kinds of patterns. If
you ever see a pigeon that's like speckled or has
(05:55):
some of that different coloration. That is a feral pigeon
descended from domesticated ones. At full adult size, a pigeon
is around fourteen inches long, maybe about twice that in wingspan,
weighing around a pound. I haven't translated that into metric.
I'm sorry, I'm not going to right now. And there
are just a lot of breeds of pigeons. I've read
(06:18):
numbers estimating from like hundreds to over one thousand. Here's
a quote that I really wanted to shoehorn in here somewhere.
It's from a farming manual from nineteen nineteen.
Speaker 1 (06:27):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (06:28):
Of the many breeds and types of fancy pigeons, which
is a thing, the most popular are the fantail, powder, archangel, magpie,
nun trumpeter, barb, turbot, and frill back. Among the so
called sporting breeds are the flying homer, the tumbler, the tippler,
and the roller Runts. Maltese hens, show homers, dragoons, and
(06:51):
duchies are bred as either fancy or utility stock.
Speaker 1 (06:58):
Yeah, I'm glad you moved warned it in. I'm really
happy that's such a wide range of like really dramatic,
really silly names.
Speaker 2 (07:10):
No oh heck, I love it. The archangel what okay?
But then the powder the powder, and like p O
does pow t e er pout powder to the archangel Anyway,
I'm like, I don't know, you're just describing an episode
of Supernatural. But but here we are. Yeah, about fifty
(07:32):
breeds of pigeons are used primarily for their meat. And
I should say here that people can and do hunt
wild pigeons or eat domesticated adult pigeons as well. They
will be tougher since they've you know, used their muscles
for flying and are better stewed. But but yeah, mostly
today we're talking about the young ones. And yes, squab
(07:54):
is certainly in the US considered something of like a
weird delicacy today. Weird because we are most familiar with
like angry, feral urban pigeons, which do not seem appetizing,
and a delicacy because, as you said earlier, Annie, like
a single whole squab, which is about a pound in
(08:16):
total weight to serve one or maybe two people as
part of a meal, will brun you like twenty to
thirty bucks.
Speaker 1 (08:24):
Mm hmmm.
Speaker 2 (08:27):
And that cost is partially due to the relative rarity
of pigeon farming these days, and the relative difficulty of
raising them compared with other poultry, Like you can artificially
inseminate a turkey or a chicken, but with pigeons you
pretty much need breeding pears. Pigeons mate for life, they
form breeding pears, like if one, if one dies, you're
(08:51):
not going to get any more pigeons out of that pigeon.
It's never going to remarry.
Speaker 1 (08:56):
Is this where the turtle dove thing comes from?
Speaker 2 (09:00):
I mean, I think I think doves and pigeons are
all part of the same family. So yeah, I mean
a lot a lot of birds like that are Yep,
it's like, nope, that one's my bird. No other birds will.
Speaker 1 (09:10):
Do all the birds will do.
Speaker 2 (09:17):
A pair of pigeons, though, will produce about five to
twenty chicks a year, and they rear them together, which
is real sweet. So the parents will take turns incubating
the eggs for about four weeks, upon which time they hatch.
They're hatched with their eyes shut and depend on their
parents regurgitating food to feed them. This is called pigeon milk.
Speaker 1 (09:41):
Oh, it's not bad. I just I wasn't anticipating it. Yeah,
absorbing this information.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
Yeah, no, no, the phrase pigeon milk is very funny.
It's okay, yeah, that's I feel I'm right there with you,
except I got this like three hours ago.
Speaker 1 (09:59):
All right.
Speaker 2 (10:00):
From this point, it takes another like four weeks for
a pigeon to reach its full size, and just before
they're ready to leave the nest, they'll be harvested. And yeah, like,
pigeons want privacy in order to do this, and they're
like a little bit persnickety about food if they are
going to produce and feed offspring. Despite what you might
(10:22):
might have seen urban pigeons eating like pizza crusts or
cigarette butts or whatever it is, researchers like still have
not figured out how to produce artificial pigeon milk that
functions well. It's thought that the parents like impart helpful
nutrients or antibodies or something during that milk production. So
(10:45):
you just cannot factory farm pigeons. They're more intensive to
keep than other birds in these are modern times and
in the way that we think about meat production being industrialized.
Uh as a side note about pigeons and cigarette butts,
this has nothing to do but one of the fun
(11:09):
things about city birds. Is that they you know, like
adapt to their environment to use what they have in
their environment, and they'll often they're not eating the cigarette butts,
but they will collect them and use them to line
their nests because they're anti microbial and anti anti like
anti past Basically, they'll keep away bugs and keep the
keep the nest cleaner because of tobaccos inherent properties.
Speaker 1 (11:32):
Oh wow, that's really interesting.
Speaker 2 (11:34):
Yeah, I mean the pigeons don't know that, but they
know that it works.
Speaker 1 (11:37):
Yeah, as we've talked about a lot of stuff on
here with humans now share we don't know why it works,
but we know that they.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
Were, Yeah, I put this stinky thing in my nest
and here it goes. Yeah, in the case of pigeons
or yeah, we we put the humans put the stinky
thing in my cheese and then it's in my milk
and then it's cheese.
Speaker 1 (11:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:59):
Sure anyway, Okay, So squab ostensibly a food show. A
squab is rich in flavor and can stand up to
to pungent or warm spices. Squabs stums sometimes stuffed before
it's roasted, as it is small enough to that it's
more short of like cook through than something like a
turkey or even a chicken. I've seen a lot of
(12:20):
recipes that add a sweet or fruity element, like apples
or grapes, or maybe like a citrus braize or glaze.
Speaker 1 (12:27):
It is a.
Speaker 2 (12:27):
Traditional pie ingredient in Morocco. It's sometimes served slow cooked
with a crispy skin in China, like like a peeking
duck kind of situation. Oh my goodness.
Speaker 1 (12:39):
I know the times I had it, it was kind
of like lightly fried and then covered in like a
really rich sauce. Yeah, it was really good. It was
like a lot. It's like, so I would like to
try I'd like to try this, yeah, fruit preparations.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
I maybe I have seen it on a menu and
I just haven't ordered it because A it was expensive,
and B I was like, the scallops are right there.
Speaker 1 (13:07):
Yeah, yeah, that's fair, that's fair. I think the time
I did order it at New Orleans it was because
the waiter really sold me on it. Oh, and I
was like, oh that sounds great, and it was great.
So I'm not mad about it, but I don't think
I would have gotten it if he had on your own. Yeah,
m hm, well what about the nutrition?
Speaker 2 (13:33):
Uh, you know, before you put all kinds of rich
sauces and stuff on top of it. Squab is really
tender without being very fatty, so it's a little less
calorically dense than other birds with similar flavors. You eat
a vegetable.
Speaker 1 (13:48):
Mmm hmm.
Speaker 2 (13:49):
Yeah, well, we do have some numbers for you, we do, okay.
The owner of the largest American pigeon, the Palmetto Pigeon Plant,
which is out of the Carolinas. He estimates that a
single chicken factory can process about as many chickens in
(14:11):
an hour as the entire American pigeon industry does in
a week. Getting a little bit away from food again,
there is a National Pigeon Association in the United States.
(14:32):
They hold a yearly pigeon show called the Grand National
that shows over two hundred breeds of pigeons and about
nine thousand individual pigeons may be entered in any given year.
Speaker 1 (14:46):
Nine thousand pigeons, over nine thousand. I don't know what
to do with this information.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
Yeah, yeah, but wait, there's more.
Speaker 1 (14:57):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (14:58):
There's also an American Racing Pigeon Union, which is an
association of around seven hundred clubs around the country that
rais and race homing pigeons. They are not the only
such association. Another one the International Federation of American Homing
Pigeon Fanciers, Incorporated. They hold a yearly convention around the
(15:23):
beginning of November. So if you want to go, now's
the time to book tickets. I think it's in Boston.
I don't know if it's always in Boston, but this
year it is.
Speaker 1 (15:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (15:31):
That includes a pigeon race that offers a first prize
of twenty five thousand dollars. Like, I love everything about this.
I did. I literally did not know that pigeon fancying
was still such a popular hobby.
Speaker 1 (15:53):
Oh I didn't either. As I said, I learned a
lot I was not expecting to learn.
Speaker 2 (16:01):
I could go on about pigeons. Okay, back back on
the food side. Apparently Spain is fond of hunting pigeons
and harvests some two million feral pigeons a year.
Speaker 1 (16:14):
Well, China is the largest producer of squab, claiming about
eighty percent and sometimes soaring yes accidental fun to six
hundred and eighty million squabs.
Speaker 2 (16:25):
Another source suggested it's even higher, like one point six
billion squabs a year. A bunch a bunch of squabs. Yeah.
In contrast, the United States produces about two point five
million squabs a year, so a little bit of a difference. Yeah,
(16:46):
and this one isn't a number, but just like a
cultural note that I wanted to include as a little
segue sort of thing. All Right, So in nineteen eighty seven,
the La Times quoted the general manager of this one
California Bay squab producer. The guy's name is Robert Shipley,
and Robert Shipley told the La Times squab is the
(17:09):
cadillac of fowl, the meat of kings. Wow, look at
you squab, right, the cadillac of fowl. What an amazing
nineteen eighty seven quote.
Speaker 1 (17:22):
That's so good. That's really good. I like it a lot. Well,
we've got quite a history for you about how we
got to where we are now. We do.
Speaker 2 (17:36):
But first we have got a quick break for a
word from our sponsors.
Speaker 1 (17:48):
They we're back. Thank you sponsor, Yes.
Speaker 2 (17:50):
Thank you. Okay. So birds are a little bit difficult
to pin down in terms of like geographical origins because
they get around so well, you know, but it seems
like pigeons originally came from like Europe down through North Africa,
and over into Asia. Domestication may have started in Mesopotamia
(18:13):
some six thousand years.
Speaker 1 (18:15):
Ago, right, and since ancient times Egyptians have domesticated pigeons.
They ate them, but they also trained them to carry messages,
which was the practice used up until the twentieth century,
which I I feel like I knew that, but I
didn't believe it. And this was a real eye opener.
(18:36):
Oh yeah for me.
Speaker 2 (18:37):
Huh, yeah, very like like up through the early twentieth century,
like World War One was very important pigeon messaging.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
Yes, oh my gosh. We'll talk a little bit about
that in a second. But many, many people like to
claim that the pigeon was the first domesticated poultry in
part because of this.
Speaker 2 (19:01):
Yeah, yeah, And you might be thinking, like, wait, I
thought you said that they're difficult to farm, and that's because, like,
conversely to our standards for farming today, pigeons were really
easy to keep around back then because you didn't have
to have much in the way of feed or environment
(19:22):
for them if you just set up a comfortable place
for them to roost, like like their natural environment is
like rock cliffs with like little kind of kind of
kind of cubbies that they can nest into. If you
set up a comfortable place like that for them to
roost with little cubbies for individual pairs to hang out in,
wild birds will just come use them, or certainly would
(19:43):
at that time, and they would go out and forage
for their own food. So yeah, if you build it,
they will come. And since squab is harvested before the
birds start flying, all you have to do is like
get a ladder, go climb up to a cubby and
just pluck one out and then you've got free protein.
Speaker 1 (20:04):
M hmmmm.
Speaker 2 (20:06):
These roosting structures are called dovecoats, and they could be
like simple small things or like huge intricate ones with
hundreds of little cubbies. As a bonus for building one
of these things, you get a free source of fertilizer
for any crops that you want to grow nearby. And yes,
(20:26):
so as people domesticated pigeons, they selected for different traits,
you know, homing and therefore for message carrying, as pretty
pets or religious symbols, for sport like shooting or racing,
and as food.
Speaker 1 (20:44):
Right and records suggests that people in the Mediterranean to
North Africa have been eating squab in all sorts of preparation,
cooked over a fire, served with rice, incased in pastry
as a pie for a long time, and I really
want that pie one.
Speaker 2 (21:00):
Like, yes, I read a really good recipe. I'll see
if I can remember to share it anyway, Okay. Dovecoats
may have spread with the Roman Empire throughout much of
the rest of Europe, and these structures and pigeons too,
I guess, only became more prized when in the fifteen
hundreds chemists figured out that they could extract saltpeter from
(21:23):
pigeon droppings, saltpeter being potassium nitrate being a component of gunpowder.
Speaker 1 (21:30):
Oh wow.
Speaker 2 (21:31):
They wound up having to like post guards outside of dovecoats,
not because they were worried about people stealing the squab
or the doves, but they were like, stay away from
our pigeon poop. We need that for our guns.
Speaker 1 (21:47):
Which is very funny given like today, right, yes, yes,
and kind of speaking of because there has been a
huge cultural shift, at least in the US about pigeons
and squab, But they were at one time really really revered,
like appreciated, and to that end throughout history, many famous
(22:13):
folks have expressed an affinity for squab or others in
the pigeon dov family, which as you said, is quite large.
So for instance, Pablo Picasso frequently depicted them, and he
named his daughter Paloma, the Spanish word for dove, and Nikola.
Tesla found a lot of companionship and solace in pigeons,
(22:36):
and after one of his favorite pigeons flew into the
window and eventually died, he allegedly said in nineteen twenty two,
I loved that pigeon as a man loves a woman,
and she loved me.
Speaker 2 (22:50):
Yeah, very intense. I mean, Tesla was a pretty intense
person in general, but the pigeon intensity is definitely one
of my favorite things.
Speaker 1 (23:00):
Yes, pigeon intensity. And back to passenger pigeons. So yeah,
as I said, they were in use for far longer
than I realized, even during World War One when a
pigeon named cher Ami, who was shot and blinded during flight,
still managed to deliver a life saving message. Sharami was
(23:24):
awarded a French military honor, the Crois de Guerre, and
her body is in the Smithsonian.
Speaker 2 (23:31):
Yeah she was a taxider maid, and yeah, she's actually
a lot of pigeons were given military honors by various
countries in World War One. There's like lists on the
internet you can find.
Speaker 1 (23:46):
The last of the wild passenger pigeons, Martha died in
the Cincinnati Zoo in nineteen fourteen. Like there's a whole
plaque you can read that they posted. They once were
so common in North America that a group of them,
which I read is called a kit could block the sun.
(24:07):
That over harvesting, over hunting, and deforestation killed them off.
Some estimates suggest that they were anywhere from three to
five million passenger pigeons in North America when the Europeans arrived. So, yeah,
there have been various attempts to combat that obviously didn't
(24:28):
really work out. The Michigan legislature, for instance, proposed a
ten year closed season on passenger pigeon on passenger pigeons,
but yeah.
Speaker 2 (24:39):
It was clearly it didn't work out.
Speaker 1 (24:40):
Yep, yep. So one of the reasons that we've been
kind of dancing around that squab fell out of fashion
in the United States is because of returning World War
Two soldiers, because they'd come familiar with the dirty city
(25:02):
pigeons that I think, as you said, a lot of
us associate with us like the thing that we think of,
and started equating that with squab, like I don't want
to eat I.
Speaker 2 (25:12):
Saw this, teach I don't want to eat any of those.
That's gross. Yeah, sure, right.
Speaker 1 (25:18):
And also there was another replacement already in the wings,
another bed pump for me, factory farmed chicken was coming
up right around this time.
Speaker 2 (25:30):
Yeah. Yeah, chickens could be grown bigger and in more
cramped quarters than pigeons could. Research had begun after World
War One and developed these really fast growing, meaty chickens
like like broilers by about the nineteen fifties, and so
it just really dovetailed. Oh my goodness, we're really we're
(25:52):
really on a roll today.
Speaker 1 (25:53):
Heck, not necessarily a good one. No, can't be stopped.
And yeah, like the nineteen sixties, the price of pigeon
meat had plummeted as the outcry calling for pest control
of pigeons grew.
Speaker 2 (26:09):
Yeah, and there are all of these pop culture references
that you that you can connect to this phenomenon. For example,
in nineteen sixty four, the Mary Poppins film really honed
in on the pigeon lady or bird woman character as
unfortunate and sympathetic. You know, she's the one who's who's
(26:30):
out in the square selling crumbs or bird seed for
teppence a bag to feed to the birds, And she
and the birds are dirty and considered pests by like
polite society. Certainly in the film The Pigeon Lady, and
like the simple pleasure of feeding the pigeons represent like
the entire class struggle and moral struggle of like business
(26:53):
versus family, and how how do you make human connections
in industrialized city and like propriety versus decency. Yeah, I
will say the character goes back to the first book,
which was published in the nineteen thirties, and the concept
of selling bird feed in city squares goes back like
(27:16):
at least a century before that I've read. But I
just find that this particular image being produced at this time,
the nineteen sixties, when squab was disappearing from plates, it's
really striking.
Speaker 1 (27:37):
Echoed in the nineteen ninety three film Home Alone two.
Speaker 2 (27:41):
Oh yes, absolutely, but the fitcheons saved the day, they do,
you know. In the nineteen seventies, Bert on Sesame Street
was portrayed as being like a really quirky Urban Night,
for how having a pet pigeon, Bernice, who was portrayed
(28:04):
by real pigeons. He has, Bert has a whole pigeon
dance and song and dance that he explains through song
with the pigeon dances, and I as an adult, I'm like,
were they talking about Tesla a little bit? Like was
this a specific like Tesla reference? I'm not sure. Anyway,
(28:24):
by nineteen eighty you had whatdy y Allen referring to
them as rats with wings. Going into the nineties, even
you had the okay on uh on animaniacs. There was
a segment called good Feathers, which was parodying Good Fellas
(28:47):
the movie film, and it was like the three main
characters like a Joe Peshio, Robert de Niro, and a
Raleiota being that they were pigeons and yeah, mm hmm, anyway.
Speaker 1 (29:07):
I love it. Yeah, yeah. But the interesting thing is,
so we had all of this going on with in
the United States, but meanwhile a lot of places, especially
in Asia and in Europe, we're really still love squab,
(29:28):
We're still into it. And in that strange way of globalization,
people from Hong Kong who were coming to the US
in the eighties bought their love for rose squab with them,
so it sort of started to get I hesitate to
(29:51):
say reintroduced, but it was like kind of yeah, here's
an here's a new well, a new way to eat
it for a lot of Americans who were like, oh,
I had thought of it as all of these right, yeah,
but yeah, yeah, and then celebrity chefs like Julia Child
(30:13):
and Emerald helped repopularize squab in the US. I heard
it called something like the TV effect. Shar at least
somewhat because it still is you know, it's still kind
of niche. It's still kind of niche.
Speaker 2 (30:27):
Oh, absolutely, yeah, I think that right. I'd say that
there's probably a number of you listening right now that
are like, white people eat pigeons, right, and there's yeah,
no shade, Like that's just if you have not heard
about that being done then yeah. And again like if
you have this this very specific connotation of a rat
(30:49):
with wings, then it's like why would I be eating that?
Speaker 1 (30:53):
Right? And I think that's a fascinating conversation that we've
had a couple of times on here. But even just
the words you use, people have these connotations, these expectations
for them, and so I feel like for some people,
if you go to a fancy French restaurant is probably
what happened to me when the Wader was like this,
(31:15):
I didn't know it was pigeon. He didn't ever say that,
and you know, but so I'm like, Okay, if it
had been pigeon, I think I might have hesitated. And
that's just like human psychology. There's a lot of problems
with that. But like it is fascinating to me this
sort of because I believe in French like they never
(31:37):
in France, they never really gave it, not gave it up,
but like they always have just eaten it.
Speaker 2 (31:43):
Yeah, it's like, oh no, that's delicious. Why wouldn't we
eat that? Clearly?
Speaker 1 (31:52):
Right? Another thing to add to the list, Lauren.
Speaker 2 (31:58):
Oh my goodness. Oh yeah, I'm going like okay, yeah,
Like I need to like call all of French restaurants
in town and be like, do you have squab right now?
What's going on?
Speaker 1 (32:08):
I think we're going to have to hire a chef
for this very elaborate, huge savor party that we're gonna
because I don't trust myself to cook squab personally. But uh,
you know, maybe I'll be like my grandfather and just.
Speaker 2 (32:28):
I've read that it's relatively simple, that it's really just yeah,
just like, don't ever cook it basically like.
Speaker 1 (32:35):
M I might have to borrow someone else's oven, then
my oven's not. It's a temperamental beast. But speaking, you
have listeners, if you have any recipes, as always, any
thoughts about this, as always, we would love to hear
from you. But yeah, that's what we have to say
(32:55):
about squad for now.
Speaker 2 (32:56):
It is.
Speaker 1 (32:57):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (32:57):
We do already have some listener mail for you, though,
and we are going to get into that as soon
as we get back from one more quick break for
a word from our sponsors, and we're back.
Speaker 1 (33:12):
Thank you sponsors, Yes, thank you, and we're back with
this snow duck hunt.
Speaker 2 (33:24):
Duck Hunt.
Speaker 1 (33:26):
Did you play duck Hunt?
Speaker 2 (33:27):
Oh yeah, Oh I was a sharpshooter. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (33:30):
I was really bad at it, but I enjoyed it.
So Sheldon wrote about our recent interview we did in
Las Vegas about Masa. Oh yeah, so yesterday I cooked
the dried corn with lime and left it overnight to
(33:53):
next to maalize. My plan was to wake up early
and while my wife was still sleeping, I would grind
the next maalized corn to Masa while listening to podcast.
The plan was to make a batch of tamale's today.
What the heck I'm making masa and your show about
Masa comes on. When that happened, when I was brewing
a bock beer, I thought it was some kind of karma.
(34:15):
Now it's getting creepy. I'm absolutely convinced that you guys
are spying on me and what I'm doing. And if
you're out there hiding in the bushes, come in and
have some tamalas. I made more than my wife and
I could eat. Look, if we were spying on you,
we would have been in there. At heart, I would
(34:36):
have been in there.
Speaker 2 (34:38):
Yeah, like like we would yeah, like we would just
be like kind of covered in shrubbery bits, but like
knocking on your door being like, hey, we hear that
you have tamalay's.
Speaker 1 (34:47):
Is that God?
Speaker 2 (34:48):
Can we have some?
Speaker 1 (34:49):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (34:49):
Yeah, Tomal's for us, we can have. Yeah, that would be.
Speaker 1 (34:55):
Yes. I Oh my gosh, Illo Tamalays and Sheldon sent
pictures amazing. I'm almost mad that we weren't spying on you. Honestly, yes, yes,
well so yeah, we'll try to be less psychic. I
(35:18):
can't promise anything, but we'll try.
Speaker 2 (35:22):
Christine wrote, I'm back to listening to sabers Back catalog
and I really enjoyed the whole Hawaii series. I particularly
enjoyed hearing about poke. We're starting to get it here
in Australia, but it looks more like the appropriated version.
There are even some places that serve it with fried
chicken strips, but that is not why I'm writing. We
get the geo targeted ads here in Australia, and one
(35:43):
came on during your episode on sustainability that made me
shake my head at the irony a bar. In mind
that we are in winter in Australia, though you wouldn't
know it from the daytime temperatures, and this means that
we don't have access to Australian grown stone fruit. But
as this ad was proud to tell me, I can
still get fresh stone fruits sourced from the US. A
(36:03):
single piece of fruit costs more than a kilo will
in summer, but if you want your fresh stone fruit,
you can have it. This is so disturbing in a
number of ways. First, it seems better to make a
profit transporting fresh fruit across the largest ocean we have,
rather than sell it cheaply in the US to shelters
or food banks, or even gasp, give it away. The second,
(36:27):
the carbon footprint required to transport that fruit so it
doesn't spoil is staggering.
Speaker 1 (36:33):
Third, it just.
Speaker 2 (36:34):
Doesn't taste as good having been hauled across the world
in cold storage. Food mileage is a sustainability issue a
lot of people don't think about enough. It was quite
heartening to hear of the Hawaiian efforts to make their
food supply more self sufficient while value adding to the
raw product. It's something every country should think about, especially
when considering whether it's really necessary to transport stone fruit
(36:55):
from California to Australia in August. Sometimes there's no che
but to pay the transport costs to get food to people,
but I really don't think that includes foods we Australians
will be able to buy locally at better quality and
cheaper in just a few months. I guess the demand
must be there, otherwise the transport wouldn't happen. So it's
(37:16):
important to think about seasonality and food origins when buying
our food. In Australia sellers are required to label fresh
produce with the origin. So Australians, next time you're at
the supermarket and see the slightly leathery peaches costing five
dollars each, ask yourself if you really need to buy
that fresh peach or if it's better to buy the
local apples or mandarins. And if you live somewhere where
(37:38):
origin labels aren't required, maybe you should start pressuring your
government to make it mandatory. It definitely helps make sustainable
shopping easier. Oh good points all.
Speaker 1 (37:47):
Absolutely, yeah, yeah, that's one thing I really love in
stores when they all label like not only where it
came from, but like when I've been to some stores
where they'll have like when you come in, like what's
in season? Yeah yeah, And there is a part of
me like I totally get it could be whatever season.
(38:11):
I just want a tomato. But I also kind of
loved the idea of I can't wait for tomato seasons, right,
you know what it is, like that kind of special
like oh here it comes.
Speaker 2 (38:21):
Oh absolutely, yeah. I get really really really excited about
seasonal produce and so like, especially when you're in that
the beautiful boom of summer, which we're in the middle
of right now, and you're getting like fresh Georgia peaches
locally and those good fresh tomatoes and fresh corn and
like all of that stuff, and it's just like, oh
(38:42):
what a what a heck and bounty you know, I
mean at the same time, right, like sometimes it is
December and.
Speaker 1 (38:50):
It's cold ish.
Speaker 2 (38:52):
Uh thanks thanks thanks global warming, but uh and right,
and you're like, I just want I don't know, man,
like I want something bright in summary and the canned
the canned version just isn't really going to do it
for you. And so even though you know it's kind
of an inferior product, but yeah, no, we're we're amazingly
(39:15):
spoiled about things being in season all the time because
of shipping, and it's it's something I don't know, Like
I recently took a field trip up to some of
the international supermarkets. I've been the Beauford Highway range here
in Atlanta, if you've ever been around there, and like
(39:38):
like I kind of like treat myself like, Okay, I
know that this came from Paraguay, but you know, like
I can't I literally can't get this kind of plantain
from America.
Speaker 1 (39:48):
Because it doesn't.
Speaker 2 (39:49):
Grow here, so so I will make the choice to
support that product because.
Speaker 1 (39:54):
I want it.
Speaker 2 (39:58):
Yeah. But right, but like other if you're just talking
about apples, like come on, like that doesn't need to
come from South America, right, I.
Speaker 1 (40:08):
Think it's like the awareness of it and keeping in mind, yeah,
like paying so much for this thing that's not going
to be great yeah and had a huge footprint. Ah.
So I think there are yeah, I think there are exceptions.
(40:28):
But generally if you just buy yeah, what's in season,
what's around which for you know, not every place can
do that. Oh oh absolutely, yeah, I know, like places
like Australia or Hawaii where you're an island, there's other
(40:49):
considerationship to takeet mine.
Speaker 2 (40:51):
Oh sure. Or you know if you're in Scandinavia and
it's like, well we have berries and salted fish and
those are the things that we have, so if we
would like something else, then we are going to import it. Right, No,
no shade on berries or salted fish.
Speaker 1 (41:06):
No as products both.
Speaker 2 (41:10):
But but right, like you know, like sometimes you want
something different and that's understandable too.
Speaker 1 (41:14):
It is it is indeed these are the things we
must wait. Uh but uh, thank you so much as
always to both of these listeners for writing in. Oh yeah,
if you would like to write to us, you can.
Our email is Hello at savorpod dot com.
Speaker 2 (41:34):
We are also on social media. You can find us
on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at saber pod and we
do hope to hear from you. Apologies, by the way
for some of my terrible mispronunciations. Heck uh in that
Masa interview. Oh geez, I'm doing great anyway. Uh yeah,
(41:55):
it's it was we were we were rolling live Here
we go. Uh. Savor is a production of iHeartRadio four
more podcasts from my Heart Radio. You can visit the
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows. Thanks as always to our super producers Dylan
Fagan and Andrew Howard. Thanks to you for listening, and
we hope that lots more good things are coming your way.
Hello, and welcome to Save your Protection of iHeartRadio. I'm
any Reason and.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
I'm more on Vocal Bomb, and today we have an
episode for you about squab.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
Squab, which is real fun to say squab squab. Why
was there any reason this was on your mind?
Speaker 2 (00:26):
I was trying to think of a protein that maybe
wasn't a seafood because I feel like the last couple
that we've done have been seafoods, and I didn't feel
like getting into anything bigger than this topic, so that
this was just a nice, manageably sized topic, much like
(00:47):
the bird itself.
Speaker 1 (00:48):
Indeed, indeed, and it is fascinating. I learned a lot
of stuff I was not anticipated on this one. Yes, yes,
in fact thought part of this was a myth. So
it's gonna be fun to go over. I have had squab, yeah,
(01:09):
I remember specifically. I've had it twice. Okay, once was
at a friend restaurant in New Orleans, Share and it
was delicious. It was very decadent. And once my grandfather,
who I don't know, I didn't know this was a
(01:31):
thing back then, but he was very into food. Like
he he was involved in the cooking. He loved like
branching out. Oh it's awesome. Yeah, like he really I
guess with him, you had like a couple of things
that he would cook often, but there were a lot
of times he was just like, I just want to
(01:52):
try something new, I want to do this. And I
think a lot of my kind of extravertedness I associate
with him because a lot of times that is you
just want to try something new. Yeah, yeah, even if
like you've had the thing before, but you haven't cooked
it before, you cooked it in this way before. And
(02:13):
he cooked it once when I was young, but it
was delicious, But I remember thinking the bones were such
a pain. That's like my strongest I remember thinking it
was really good, but like I was a kid, and
I was.
Speaker 2 (02:30):
Like, you're like bones, are there so many of them?
Speaker 1 (02:33):
Right? Yeah? Sure, yeah, I don't.
Speaker 2 (02:37):
I don't think i've ever had it.
Speaker 1 (02:39):
Oh well, it is quite good.
Speaker 2 (02:43):
I'm yeah, I'm really mad at myself now, I don't.
I don't think I've ever encountered it on a menu.
I can't remember ever seeing it in in a grocery store,
which probably just speaks to the modern lack of popularity
(03:06):
that we're going to talk about.
Speaker 1 (03:08):
For a lot of this episode. Yes, and also expensiveness.
Oh sure that's true. Yeah, the price because my grandfather
had the money to get so, I will say, and
it's quite expensive. So yeah. I in thinking about this,
I guess like related topics would be duck. We haven't
(03:32):
done chicken half I would remember that break my brain.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
I I've been avoiding chicken because I'm like, we're going
to need to break that up, Like that's that's too much.
Speaker 1 (03:42):
Yeah, we've done like associated like chicken nuggets. Right, we've
done stuff related, but yeah, that's a.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
Not today chicken.
Speaker 1 (03:57):
Chicken. But squab I must come, yes, which I guess
brings us to rock question. Squab What is it? Well?
Speaker 2 (04:11):
Squab is the culinary term for pigeon, specifically young pigeon
harvested before they start flying. It's a dark, rich tasting,
and slightly gamy kind of meat, sort of like duck
or goose, but the fact that they're harvested young means
that they're more tender than those other birds. Squab is
often broken down into breasts and legs and then grilled
(04:33):
or roasted to like a rare to medium kind of
temperature to highlight that tenderness. Though it can also be
simmered and then deboned, and the meat used in savory
pies or in stews or what have you. It's like
a tiny tender duck or like a larger, richer quail.
It's like if a chicken were all dark meat. Again,
(04:57):
I haven't had it, but I get the idea that
it's sort of like a platonic ideal of poultry.
Speaker 1 (05:05):
Yeah, you're kind of describing like the Goldilocks, Like, yeah,
so it's a good like middle yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:13):
Oh man man, okay, all right. So pigeon. When I
say pigeon, the idea that you probably have in your
head of like a like a gray bird with a
couple darker bands on its wings and a little bit
of like a greenish or purplish sheen around its throat.
(05:33):
That is a type of wild bird called a common
pigeon or rock pigeon or rock dove. A squab comes
from long domesticated versions of rock pigeons that can have
a whole range of coloration from snowy white to reddish
brown to sooty black in all kinds of patterns. If
you ever see a pigeon that's like speckled or has
(05:55):
some of that different coloration. That is a feral pigeon
descended from domesticated ones. At full adult size, a pigeon
is around fourteen inches long, maybe about twice that in wingspan,
weighing around a pound. I haven't translated that into metric.
I'm sorry, I'm not going to right now. And there
are just a lot of breeds of pigeons. I've read
(06:18):
numbers estimating from like hundreds to over one thousand. Here's
a quote that I really wanted to shoehorn in here somewhere.
It's from a farming manual from nineteen nineteen.
Speaker 1 (06:27):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (06:28):
Of the many breeds and types of fancy pigeons, which
is a thing, the most popular are the fantail, powder, archangel, magpie,
nun trumpeter, barb, turbot, and frill back. Among the so
called sporting breeds are the flying homer, the tumbler, the tippler,
and the roller Runts. Maltese hens, show homers, dragoons, and
(06:51):
duchies are bred as either fancy or utility stock.
Speaker 1 (06:58):
Yeah, I'm glad you moved warned it in. I'm really
happy that's such a wide range of like really dramatic,
really silly names.
Speaker 2 (07:10):
No oh heck, I love it. The archangel what okay?
But then the powder the powder, and like p O
does pow t e er pout powder to the archangel Anyway,
I'm like, I don't know, you're just describing an episode
of Supernatural. But but here we are. Yeah, about fifty
(07:32):
breeds of pigeons are used primarily for their meat. And
I should say here that people can and do hunt
wild pigeons or eat domesticated adult pigeons as well. They
will be tougher since they've you know, used their muscles
for flying and are better stewed. But but yeah, mostly
today we're talking about the young ones. And yes, squab
(07:54):
is certainly in the US considered something of like a
weird delicacy today. Weird because we are most familiar with
like angry, feral urban pigeons, which do not seem appetizing,
and a delicacy because, as you said earlier, Annie, like
a single whole squab, which is about a pound in
(08:16):
total weight to serve one or maybe two people as
part of a meal, will brun you like twenty to
thirty bucks.
Speaker 1 (08:24):
Mm hmmm.
Speaker 2 (08:27):
And that cost is partially due to the relative rarity
of pigeon farming these days, and the relative difficulty of
raising them compared with other poultry, Like you can artificially
inseminate a turkey or a chicken, but with pigeons you
pretty much need breeding pears. Pigeons mate for life, they
form breeding pears, like if one, if one dies, you're
(08:51):
not going to get any more pigeons out of that pigeon.
It's never going to remarry.
Speaker 1 (08:56):
Is this where the turtle dove thing comes from?
Speaker 2 (09:00):
I mean, I think I think doves and pigeons are
all part of the same family. So yeah, I mean
a lot a lot of birds like that are Yep,
it's like, nope, that one's my bird. No other birds will.
Speaker 1 (09:10):
Do all the birds will do.
Speaker 2 (09:17):
A pair of pigeons, though, will produce about five to
twenty chicks a year, and they rear them together, which
is real sweet. So the parents will take turns incubating
the eggs for about four weeks, upon which time they hatch.
They're hatched with their eyes shut and depend on their
parents regurgitating food to feed them. This is called pigeon milk.
Speaker 1 (09:41):
Oh, it's not bad. I just I wasn't anticipating it. Yeah,
absorbing this information.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
Yeah, no, no, the phrase pigeon milk is very funny.
It's okay, yeah, that's I feel I'm right there with you,
except I got this like three hours ago.
Speaker 1 (09:59):
All right.
Speaker 2 (10:00):
From this point, it takes another like four weeks for
a pigeon to reach its full size, and just before
they're ready to leave the nest, they'll be harvested. And yeah, like,
pigeons want privacy in order to do this, and they're
like a little bit persnickety about food if they are
going to produce and feed offspring. Despite what you might
(10:22):
might have seen urban pigeons eating like pizza crusts or
cigarette butts or whatever it is, researchers like still have
not figured out how to produce artificial pigeon milk that
functions well. It's thought that the parents like impart helpful
nutrients or antibodies or something during that milk production. So
(10:45):
you just cannot factory farm pigeons. They're more intensive to
keep than other birds in these are modern times and
in the way that we think about meat production being industrialized.
Uh as a side note about pigeons and cigarette butts,
this has nothing to do but one of the fun
(11:09):
things about city birds. Is that they you know, like
adapt to their environment to use what they have in
their environment, and they'll often they're not eating the cigarette butts,
but they will collect them and use them to line
their nests because they're anti microbial and anti anti like
anti past Basically, they'll keep away bugs and keep the
keep the nest cleaner because of tobaccos inherent properties.
Speaker 1 (11:32):
Oh wow, that's really interesting.
Speaker 2 (11:34):
Yeah, I mean the pigeons don't know that, but they
know that it works.
Speaker 1 (11:37):
Yeah, as we've talked about a lot of stuff on
here with humans now share we don't know why it works,
but we know that they.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
Were, Yeah, I put this stinky thing in my nest
and here it goes. Yeah, in the case of pigeons
or yeah, we we put the humans put the stinky
thing in my cheese and then it's in my milk
and then it's cheese.
Speaker 1 (11:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:59):
Sure anyway, Okay, So squab ostensibly a food show. A
squab is rich in flavor and can stand up to
to pungent or warm spices. Squabs stums sometimes stuffed before
it's roasted, as it is small enough to that it's
more short of like cook through than something like a
turkey or even a chicken. I've seen a lot of
(12:20):
recipes that add a sweet or fruity element, like apples
or grapes, or maybe like a citrus braize or glaze.
Speaker 1 (12:27):
It is a.
Speaker 2 (12:27):
Traditional pie ingredient in Morocco. It's sometimes served slow cooked
with a crispy skin in China, like like a peeking
duck kind of situation. Oh my goodness.
Speaker 1 (12:39):
I know the times I had it, it was kind
of like lightly fried and then covered in like a
really rich sauce. Yeah, it was really good. It was
like a lot. It's like, so I would like to
try I'd like to try this, yeah, fruit preparations.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
I maybe I have seen it on a menu and
I just haven't ordered it because A it was expensive,
and B I was like, the scallops are right there.
Speaker 1 (13:07):
Yeah, yeah, that's fair, that's fair. I think the time
I did order it at New Orleans it was because
the waiter really sold me on it. Oh, and I
was like, oh that sounds great, and it was great.
So I'm not mad about it, but I don't think
I would have gotten it if he had on your own. Yeah,
m hm, well what about the nutrition?
Speaker 2 (13:33):
Uh, you know, before you put all kinds of rich
sauces and stuff on top of it. Squab is really
tender without being very fatty, so it's a little less
calorically dense than other birds with similar flavors. You eat
a vegetable.
Speaker 1 (13:48):
Mmm hmm.
Speaker 2 (13:49):
Yeah, well, we do have some numbers for you, we do, okay.
The owner of the largest American pigeon, the Palmetto Pigeon Plant,
which is out of the Carolinas. He estimates that a
single chicken factory can process about as many chickens in
(14:11):
an hour as the entire American pigeon industry does in
a week. Getting a little bit away from food again,
there is a National Pigeon Association in the United States.
(14:32):
They hold a yearly pigeon show called the Grand National
that shows over two hundred breeds of pigeons and about
nine thousand individual pigeons may be entered in any given year.
Speaker 1 (14:46):
Nine thousand pigeons, over nine thousand. I don't know what
to do with this information.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
Yeah, yeah, but wait, there's more.
Speaker 1 (14:57):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (14:58):
There's also an American Racing Pigeon Union, which is an
association of around seven hundred clubs around the country that
rais and race homing pigeons. They are not the only
such association. Another one the International Federation of American Homing
Pigeon Fanciers, Incorporated. They hold a yearly convention around the
(15:23):
beginning of November. So if you want to go, now's
the time to book tickets. I think it's in Boston.
I don't know if it's always in Boston, but this
year it is.
Speaker 1 (15:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (15:31):
That includes a pigeon race that offers a first prize
of twenty five thousand dollars. Like, I love everything about this.
I did. I literally did not know that pigeon fancying
was still such a popular hobby.
Speaker 1 (15:53):
Oh I didn't either. As I said, I learned a
lot I was not expecting to learn.
Speaker 2 (16:01):
I could go on about pigeons. Okay, back back on
the food side. Apparently Spain is fond of hunting pigeons
and harvests some two million feral pigeons a year.
Speaker 1 (16:14):
Well, China is the largest producer of squab, claiming about
eighty percent and sometimes soaring yes accidental fun to six
hundred and eighty million squabs.
Speaker 2 (16:25):
Another source suggested it's even higher, like one point six
billion squabs a year. A bunch a bunch of squabs. Yeah.
In contrast, the United States produces about two point five
million squabs a year, so a little bit of a difference. Yeah,
(16:46):
and this one isn't a number, but just like a
cultural note that I wanted to include as a little
segue sort of thing. All Right, So in nineteen eighty seven,
the La Times quoted the general manager of this one
California Bay squab producer. The guy's name is Robert Shipley,
and Robert Shipley told the La Times squab is the
(17:09):
cadillac of fowl, the meat of kings. Wow, look at
you squab, right, the cadillac of fowl. What an amazing
nineteen eighty seven quote.
Speaker 1 (17:22):
That's so good. That's really good. I like it a lot. Well,
we've got quite a history for you about how we
got to where we are now. We do.
Speaker 2 (17:36):
But first we have got a quick break for a
word from our sponsors.
Speaker 1 (17:48):
They we're back. Thank you sponsor, Yes.
Speaker 2 (17:50):
Thank you. Okay. So birds are a little bit difficult
to pin down in terms of like geographical origins because
they get around so well, you know, but it seems
like pigeons originally came from like Europe down through North Africa,
and over into Asia. Domestication may have started in Mesopotamia
(18:13):
some six thousand years.
Speaker 1 (18:15):
Ago, right, and since ancient times Egyptians have domesticated pigeons.
They ate them, but they also trained them to carry messages,
which was the practice used up until the twentieth century,
which I I feel like I knew that, but I
didn't believe it. And this was a real eye opener.
(18:36):
Oh yeah for me.
Speaker 2 (18:37):
Huh, yeah, very like like up through the early twentieth century,
like World War One was very important pigeon messaging.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
Yes, oh my gosh. We'll talk a little bit about
that in a second. But many, many people like to
claim that the pigeon was the first domesticated poultry in
part because of this.
Speaker 2 (19:01):
Yeah, yeah, And you might be thinking, like, wait, I
thought you said that they're difficult to farm, and that's because, like,
conversely to our standards for farming today, pigeons were really
easy to keep around back then because you didn't have
to have much in the way of feed or environment
(19:22):
for them if you just set up a comfortable place
for them to roost, like like their natural environment is
like rock cliffs with like little kind of kind of
kind of cubbies that they can nest into. If you
set up a comfortable place like that for them to
roost with little cubbies for individual pairs to hang out in,
wild birds will just come use them, or certainly would
(19:43):
at that time, and they would go out and forage
for their own food. So yeah, if you build it,
they will come. And since squab is harvested before the
birds start flying, all you have to do is like
get a ladder, go climb up to a cubby and
just pluck one out and then you've got free protein.
Speaker 1 (20:04):
M hmmmm.
Speaker 2 (20:06):
These roosting structures are called dovecoats, and they could be
like simple small things or like huge intricate ones with
hundreds of little cubbies. As a bonus for building one
of these things, you get a free source of fertilizer
for any crops that you want to grow nearby. And yes,
(20:26):
so as people domesticated pigeons, they selected for different traits,
you know, homing and therefore for message carrying, as pretty
pets or religious symbols, for sport like shooting or racing,
and as food.
Speaker 1 (20:44):
Right and records suggests that people in the Mediterranean to
North Africa have been eating squab in all sorts of preparation,
cooked over a fire, served with rice, incased in pastry
as a pie for a long time, and I really
want that pie one.
Speaker 2 (21:00):
Like, yes, I read a really good recipe. I'll see
if I can remember to share it anyway, Okay. Dovecoats
may have spread with the Roman Empire throughout much of
the rest of Europe, and these structures and pigeons too,
I guess, only became more prized when in the fifteen
hundreds chemists figured out that they could extract saltpeter from
(21:23):
pigeon droppings, saltpeter being potassium nitrate being a component of gunpowder.
Speaker 1 (21:30):
Oh wow.
Speaker 2 (21:31):
They wound up having to like post guards outside of dovecoats,
not because they were worried about people stealing the squab
or the doves, but they were like, stay away from
our pigeon poop. We need that for our guns.
Speaker 1 (21:47):
Which is very funny given like today, right, yes, yes,
and kind of speaking of because there has been a
huge cultural shift, at least in the US about pigeons
and squab, But they were at one time really really revered,
like appreciated, and to that end throughout history, many famous
(22:13):
folks have expressed an affinity for squab or others in
the pigeon dov family, which as you said, is quite large.
So for instance, Pablo Picasso frequently depicted them, and he
named his daughter Paloma, the Spanish word for dove, and Nikola.
Tesla found a lot of companionship and solace in pigeons,
(22:36):
and after one of his favorite pigeons flew into the
window and eventually died, he allegedly said in nineteen twenty two,
I loved that pigeon as a man loves a woman,
and she loved me.
Speaker 2 (22:50):
Yeah, very intense. I mean, Tesla was a pretty intense
person in general, but the pigeon intensity is definitely one
of my favorite things.
Speaker 1 (23:00):
Yes, pigeon intensity. And back to passenger pigeons. So yeah,
as I said, they were in use for far longer
than I realized, even during World War One when a
pigeon named cher Ami, who was shot and blinded during flight,
still managed to deliver a life saving message. Sharami was
(23:24):
awarded a French military honor, the Crois de Guerre, and
her body is in the Smithsonian.
Speaker 2 (23:31):
Yeah she was a taxider maid, and yeah, she's actually
a lot of pigeons were given military honors by various
countries in World War One. There's like lists on the
internet you can find.
Speaker 1 (23:46):
The last of the wild passenger pigeons, Martha died in
the Cincinnati Zoo in nineteen fourteen. Like there's a whole
plaque you can read that they posted. They once were
so common in North America that a group of them,
which I read is called a kit could block the sun.
(24:07):
That over harvesting, over hunting, and deforestation killed them off.
Some estimates suggest that they were anywhere from three to
five million passenger pigeons in North America when the Europeans arrived. So, yeah,
there have been various attempts to combat that obviously didn't
(24:28):
really work out. The Michigan legislature, for instance, proposed a
ten year closed season on passenger pigeon on passenger pigeons,
but yeah.
Speaker 2 (24:39):
It was clearly it didn't work out.
Speaker 1 (24:40):
Yep, yep. So one of the reasons that we've been
kind of dancing around that squab fell out of fashion
in the United States is because of returning World War
Two soldiers, because they'd come familiar with the dirty city
(25:02):
pigeons that I think, as you said, a lot of
us associate with us like the thing that we think of,
and started equating that with squab, like I don't want
to eat I.
Speaker 2 (25:12):
Saw this, teach I don't want to eat any of those.
That's gross. Yeah, sure, right.
Speaker 1 (25:18):
And also there was another replacement already in the wings,
another bed pump for me, factory farmed chicken was coming
up right around this time.
Speaker 2 (25:30):
Yeah. Yeah, chickens could be grown bigger and in more
cramped quarters than pigeons could. Research had begun after World
War One and developed these really fast growing, meaty chickens
like like broilers by about the nineteen fifties, and so
it just really dovetailed. Oh my goodness, we're really we're
(25:52):
really on a roll today.
Speaker 1 (25:53):
Heck, not necessarily a good one. No, can't be stopped.
And yeah, like the nineteen sixties, the price of pigeon
meat had plummeted as the outcry calling for pest control
of pigeons grew.
Speaker 2 (26:09):
Yeah, and there are all of these pop culture references
that you that you can connect to this phenomenon. For example,
in nineteen sixty four, the Mary Poppins film really honed
in on the pigeon lady or bird woman character as
unfortunate and sympathetic. You know, she's the one who's who's
(26:30):
out in the square selling crumbs or bird seed for
teppence a bag to feed to the birds, And she
and the birds are dirty and considered pests by like
polite society. Certainly in the film The Pigeon Lady, and
like the simple pleasure of feeding the pigeons represent like
the entire class struggle and moral struggle of like business
(26:53):
versus family, and how how do you make human connections
in industrialized city and like propriety versus decency. Yeah, I
will say the character goes back to the first book,
which was published in the nineteen thirties, and the concept
of selling bird feed in city squares goes back like
(27:16):
at least a century before that I've read. But I
just find that this particular image being produced at this time,
the nineteen sixties, when squab was disappearing from plates, it's
really striking.
Speaker 1 (27:37):
Echoed in the nineteen ninety three film Home Alone two.
Speaker 2 (27:41):
Oh yes, absolutely, but the fitcheons saved the day, they do,
you know. In the nineteen seventies, Bert on Sesame Street
was portrayed as being like a really quirky Urban Night,
for how having a pet pigeon, Bernice, who was portrayed
(28:04):
by real pigeons. He has, Bert has a whole pigeon
dance and song and dance that he explains through song
with the pigeon dances, and I as an adult, I'm like,
were they talking about Tesla a little bit? Like was
this a specific like Tesla reference? I'm not sure. Anyway,
(28:24):
by nineteen eighty you had whatdy y Allen referring to
them as rats with wings. Going into the nineties, even
you had the okay on uh on animaniacs. There was
a segment called good Feathers, which was parodying Good Fellas
(28:47):
the movie film, and it was like the three main
characters like a Joe Peshio, Robert de Niro, and a
Raleiota being that they were pigeons and yeah, mm hmm, anyway.
Speaker 1 (29:07):
I love it. Yeah, yeah. But the interesting thing is,
so we had all of this going on with in
the United States, but meanwhile a lot of places, especially
in Asia and in Europe, we're really still love squab,
(29:28):
We're still into it. And in that strange way of globalization,
people from Hong Kong who were coming to the US
in the eighties bought their love for rose squab with them,
so it sort of started to get I hesitate to
(29:51):
say reintroduced, but it was like kind of yeah, here's
an here's a new well, a new way to eat
it for a lot of Americans who were like, oh,
I had thought of it as all of these right, yeah,
but yeah, yeah, and then celebrity chefs like Julia Child
(30:13):
and Emerald helped repopularize squab in the US. I heard
it called something like the TV effect. Shar at least
somewhat because it still is you know, it's still kind
of niche. It's still kind of niche.
Speaker 2 (30:27):
Oh, absolutely, yeah, I think that right. I'd say that
there's probably a number of you listening right now that
are like, white people eat pigeons, right, and there's yeah,
no shade, Like that's just if you have not heard
about that being done then yeah. And again like if
you have this this very specific connotation of a rat
(30:49):
with wings, then it's like why would I be eating that?
Speaker 1 (30:53):
Right? And I think that's a fascinating conversation that we've
had a couple of times on here. But even just
the words you use, people have these connotations, these expectations
for them, and so I feel like for some people,
if you go to a fancy French restaurant is probably
what happened to me when the Wader was like this,
(31:15):
I didn't know it was pigeon. He didn't ever say that,
and you know, but so I'm like, Okay, if it
had been pigeon, I think I might have hesitated. And
that's just like human psychology. There's a lot of problems
with that. But like it is fascinating to me this
sort of because I believe in French like they never
(31:37):
in France, they never really gave it, not gave it up,
but like they always have just eaten it.
Speaker 2 (31:43):
Yeah, it's like, oh no, that's delicious. Why wouldn't we
eat that? Clearly?
Speaker 1 (31:52):
Right? Another thing to add to the list, Lauren.
Speaker 2 (31:58):
Oh my goodness. Oh yeah, I'm going like okay, yeah,
Like I need to like call all of French restaurants
in town and be like, do you have squab right now?
What's going on?
Speaker 1 (32:08):
I think we're going to have to hire a chef
for this very elaborate, huge savor party that we're gonna
because I don't trust myself to cook squab personally. But uh,
you know, maybe I'll be like my grandfather and just.
Speaker 2 (32:28):
I've read that it's relatively simple, that it's really just yeah,
just like, don't ever cook it basically like.
Speaker 1 (32:35):
M I might have to borrow someone else's oven, then
my oven's not. It's a temperamental beast. But speaking, you
have listeners, if you have any recipes, as always, any
thoughts about this, as always, we would love to hear
from you. But yeah, that's what we have to say
(32:55):
about squad for now.
Speaker 2 (32:56):
It is.
Speaker 1 (32:57):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (32:57):
We do already have some listener mail for you, though,
and we are going to get into that as soon
as we get back from one more quick break for
a word from our sponsors, and we're back.
Speaker 1 (33:12):
Thank you sponsors, Yes, thank you, and we're back with
this snow duck hunt.
Speaker 2 (33:24):
Duck Hunt.
Speaker 1 (33:26):
Did you play duck Hunt?
Speaker 2 (33:27):
Oh yeah, Oh I was a sharpshooter. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (33:30):
I was really bad at it, but I enjoyed it.
So Sheldon wrote about our recent interview we did in
Las Vegas about Masa. Oh yeah, so yesterday I cooked
the dried corn with lime and left it overnight to
(33:53):
next to maalize. My plan was to wake up early
and while my wife was still sleeping, I would grind
the next maalized corn to Masa while listening to podcast.
The plan was to make a batch of tamale's today.
What the heck I'm making masa and your show about
Masa comes on. When that happened, when I was brewing
a bock beer, I thought it was some kind of karma.
(34:15):
Now it's getting creepy. I'm absolutely convinced that you guys
are spying on me and what I'm doing. And if
you're out there hiding in the bushes, come in and
have some tamalas. I made more than my wife and
I could eat. Look, if we were spying on you,
we would have been in there. At heart, I would
(34:36):
have been in there.
Speaker 2 (34:38):
Yeah, like like we would yeah, like we would just
be like kind of covered in shrubbery bits, but like
knocking on your door being like, hey, we hear that
you have tamalay's.
Speaker 1 (34:47):
Is that God?
Speaker 2 (34:48):
Can we have some?
Speaker 1 (34:49):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (34:49):
Yeah, Tomal's for us, we can have. Yeah, that would be.
Speaker 1 (34:55):
Yes. I Oh my gosh, Illo Tamalays and Sheldon sent
pictures amazing. I'm almost mad that we weren't spying on you. Honestly, yes, yes,
well so yeah, we'll try to be less psychic. I
(35:18):
can't promise anything, but we'll try.
Speaker 2 (35:22):
Christine wrote, I'm back to listening to sabers Back catalog
and I really enjoyed the whole Hawaii series. I particularly
enjoyed hearing about poke. We're starting to get it here
in Australia, but it looks more like the appropriated version.
There are even some places that serve it with fried
chicken strips, but that is not why I'm writing. We
get the geo targeted ads here in Australia, and one
(35:43):
came on during your episode on sustainability that made me
shake my head at the irony a bar. In mind
that we are in winter in Australia, though you wouldn't
know it from the daytime temperatures, and this means that
we don't have access to Australian grown stone fruit. But
as this ad was proud to tell me, I can
still get fresh stone fruits sourced from the US. A
(36:03):
single piece of fruit costs more than a kilo will
in summer, but if you want your fresh stone fruit,
you can have it. This is so disturbing in a
number of ways. First, it seems better to make a
profit transporting fresh fruit across the largest ocean we have,
rather than sell it cheaply in the US to shelters
or food banks, or even gasp, give it away. The second,
(36:27):
the carbon footprint required to transport that fruit so it
doesn't spoil is staggering.
Speaker 1 (36:33):
Third, it just.
Speaker 2 (36:34):
Doesn't taste as good having been hauled across the world
in cold storage. Food mileage is a sustainability issue a
lot of people don't think about enough. It was quite
heartening to hear of the Hawaiian efforts to make their
food supply more self sufficient while value adding to the
raw product. It's something every country should think about, especially
when considering whether it's really necessary to transport stone fruit
(36:55):
from California to Australia in August. Sometimes there's no che
but to pay the transport costs to get food to people,
but I really don't think that includes foods we Australians
will be able to buy locally at better quality and
cheaper in just a few months. I guess the demand
must be there, otherwise the transport wouldn't happen. So it's
(37:16):
important to think about seasonality and food origins when buying
our food. In Australia sellers are required to label fresh
produce with the origin. So Australians, next time you're at
the supermarket and see the slightly leathery peaches costing five
dollars each, ask yourself if you really need to buy
that fresh peach or if it's better to buy the
local apples or mandarins. And if you live somewhere where
(37:38):
origin labels aren't required, maybe you should start pressuring your
government to make it mandatory. It definitely helps make sustainable
shopping easier. Oh good points all.
Speaker 1 (37:47):
Absolutely, yeah, yeah, that's one thing I really love in
stores when they all label like not only where it
came from, but like when I've been to some stores
where they'll have like when you come in, like what's
in season? Yeah yeah, And there is a part of
me like I totally get it could be whatever season.
(38:11):
I just want a tomato. But I also kind of
loved the idea of I can't wait for tomato seasons, right,
you know what it is, like that kind of special
like oh here it comes.
Speaker 2 (38:21):
Oh absolutely, yeah. I get really really really excited about
seasonal produce and so like, especially when you're in that
the beautiful boom of summer, which we're in the middle
of right now, and you're getting like fresh Georgia peaches
locally and those good fresh tomatoes and fresh corn and
like all of that stuff, and it's just like, oh
(38:42):
what a what a heck and bounty you know, I
mean at the same time, right, like sometimes it is
December and.
Speaker 1 (38:50):
It's cold ish.
Speaker 2 (38:52):
Uh thanks thanks thanks global warming, but uh and right,
and you're like, I just want I don't know, man,
like I want something bright in summary and the canned
the canned version just isn't really going to do it
for you. And so even though you know it's kind
of an inferior product, but yeah, no, we're we're amazingly
(39:15):
spoiled about things being in season all the time because
of shipping, and it's it's something I don't know, Like
I recently took a field trip up to some of
the international supermarkets. I've been the Beauford Highway range here
in Atlanta, if you've ever been around there, and like
(39:38):
like I kind of like treat myself like, Okay, I
know that this came from Paraguay, but you know, like
I can't I literally can't get this kind of plantain
from America.
Speaker 1 (39:48):
Because it doesn't.
Speaker 2 (39:49):
Grow here, so so I will make the choice to
support that product because.
Speaker 1 (39:54):
I want it.
Speaker 2 (39:58):
Yeah. But right, but like other if you're just talking
about apples, like come on, like that doesn't need to
come from South America, right, I.
Speaker 1 (40:08):
Think it's like the awareness of it and keeping in mind, yeah,
like paying so much for this thing that's not going
to be great yeah and had a huge footprint. Ah.
So I think there are yeah, I think there are exceptions.
(40:28):
But generally if you just buy yeah, what's in season,
what's around which for you know, not every place can
do that. Oh oh absolutely, yeah, I know, like places
like Australia or Hawaii where you're an island, there's other
(40:49):
considerationship to takeet mine.
Speaker 2 (40:51):
Oh sure. Or you know if you're in Scandinavia and
it's like, well we have berries and salted fish and
those are the things that we have, so if we
would like something else, then we are going to import it. Right, No,
no shade on berries or salted fish.
Speaker 1 (41:06):
No as products both.
Speaker 2 (41:10):
But but right, like you know, like sometimes you want
something different and that's understandable too.
Speaker 1 (41:14):
It is it is indeed these are the things we
must wait. Uh but uh, thank you so much as
always to both of these listeners for writing in. Oh yeah,
if you would like to write to us, you can.
Our email is Hello at savorpod dot com.
Speaker 2 (41:34):
We are also on social media. You can find us
on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at saber pod and we
do hope to hear from you. Apologies, by the way
for some of my terrible mispronunciations. Heck uh in that
Masa interview. Oh geez, I'm doing great anyway. Uh yeah,
(41:55):
it's it was we were we were rolling live Here
we go. Uh. Savor is a production of iHeartRadio four
more podcasts from my Heart Radio. You can visit the
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows. Thanks as always to our super producers Dylan
Fagan and Andrew Howard. Thanks to you for listening, and
we hope that lots more good things are coming your way.
Savor News
Hosts And Creators
Anney Reese
Lauren Vogelbaum
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