Sample Recipe Contest Entry from Nellie Strowbridge

Here's an entry to our Recipe Redux (aka Not Much Meat on a Carey Chick) contest to get you all inspired!

Basket Soup (Step One)

First: (I’ll get to the soup, directly)

set a rabbit snare, preferably in the woods.

Wait for a full moon on a frosty night

when rabbits are running

getting their exercise for the big event.

When you find a plump rabbit flicing (thrashing) in the snare,

bring it home still warm, and so fresh the memory of its run

is still imprinted on its eyeballs.

Sculp (skin) it and relieve it of liver, lights and grand piece (pancreas).

shuff the rabbit in the oven until it’s cooked. Have a scoff.

Don’t be greedy. Leave a little meat on the basket (skeleton) for a pot of:

Basket Soup (Step Two)

Pour a slut kettle full of iceberg water into a large pot (not a chamber pot) on the damper of a bogie stove.

Bring to a boil, then sling in the rabbit basket.

Now that the rabbit is lighter than when it wore fur and flesh, it can do a dance while you cut up navel beef (or substitute a horse’s navel), pickled in a bucket of bloody brine (forcing your lazy arteries into doing a bit of exercise to get your blood circulating).

Keep boiling until you have a nice, unbroken greasy surface.

Throw in the grand piece (pancreas) for a relish.

Wash new taties. Cut pieces out of them to make chip potatoes. Don’t use spuds that have been around so long their eyes are popping white snakes.

Sling in tootree chibols (mild onions).

Lastly but not leastly, heave in a cup of freshwater rice (dampened flour rolled into tiny balls).

In between the whiles slurp a little liquor off the soup.

Drop in puff-ins of dough for white boys. Smother them with a tight lid.

When the doughboys raise the cover, they are tipping their hat to say, “It’s time to slurp soup!”

For a real fog meal (big meal) you’ll have the rabbit, then the basket soup. Then you can go on to having a drop of flip (concoction of liquor, eggs and sugar or a drink of spruce) while someone else from facebook cooks the goose for the turkey dinner.

Make a blueberry grunt or lemon curd (a soft custard) for afters. Have a second cup of tea to mimpse (drink slowly).

When the full-course meal is done,let out a gark (burp) to show you appreciate the grub.

Save some coudins (couldn’t eat) for quality (visitors), and only the bones for the gulls’ beals (bills).

Nellie Strowbridge

N.B. Nellie Strowbridge is a Newfoundland writer and author of The Newfoundland Tongue.

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REDEFiNE iT: Dictionary of Newfoundland English is brought to you by the Newfoundland based audio book publisher Rattling Books.