"I Did Not Get My Spaghetti-O's, I Got Spaghetti. I Want The Press To Know This"

The roadkill doe’s last meal was green grass, red clover, acorns and apples. She smelled sweet as a clean cowbarn when we opened her, with a loft full of hay, just barely fermenting in the warm centers of the fresh bales. How did she choose her last meal? Did she want it, did she need it, did she just happen to walk by it? Was she struck by the car because she was dying to get to the orchard? Is there pleasure in eating for other animals or is it all balancing the books and biological exigencies? Sal ate half a box of Mexican mazipan candies the other day, delicately unwrapping each one, even going back to the scene of the crime after being scolded to lap up the crumbs. Hard to imagine any part of her body beside her mouth was really screaming for peanuts and sugar.

I watched this flock of robins the other morning, gulping sumac berries like it was their last meal. A hawk flew over three times, screaming, before they flushed, so full of fruit that they could barely lift off. I wondered if they tasted the tartness the way we do. Was it flavor they were risking their tailfeathers for or just fuel for migration? They sure looked like they were worshiping the fruit like the people of Palestine, reddening their Musakhan with sumac spice and naming it their national dish, but what did I know about food worship - I was a sad, sick, lump on the couch with no appetite. I wasn’t on death’s door or anything, but when a friend reminded me that “the veil between the living and the dead is awful thin in late October” I was worried to think how right he was and went a little pale when I realized that if you were to ask me at that moment what my last meal would be I may have said chicken broth. I was consumed with thoughts of the no-longer-living, the no-longer-eating, and I wondered what they were hungriest for in their last moments. I read through accounts of death row inmates' last meal requests, deathbed requests, and meal orders from mothers just after giving birth. There were no salads, aside from one inmate who requested a single olive with the pit intact. There was, unsurprisingly, lots of fried chicken. The desires seemed mostly rooted in flavor, salty, fatty, acidic, or sweet, and I couldn’t help but wonder if some of the requests came not only from the mouth wanting pleasure but also from the body, which, in prison, or on a deathbed, or having just given birth, was deeply depleted and making its own nutritional demands. Shouting louder than both the body and the mouth, though, was the past. Some of the requests were so heartbreakingly specific, you knew the person was begging for a singular portal to a different place. Thomas Grasso’s last words before he was given a lethal injection were, “I did not get my Spaghetti-O's. I got spaghetti. I want the press to know this.” As it has, and as it likely always will, over even your favorite flavor, nostalgia reigns supreme.

After a few days of liquids and low culinary libido, I finally got hungry. In mind and mouth I was famished, and I had the energy to cook, so I cooked everything I wanted. First, I wanted biscuits.

Not a tedious, high-rise, rolled and folded biscuit, but bear fat biscuits, batter dropped easy onto a hot skillet and baked just until tawny-topped. I used this recipe as a base and subbed in bear fat for half of the butter. I may have been biased by having not eaten solid foods for a few days, but I swear these were last-meal-level biscuits. My husband said they didn’t even need butter.

With my appetite recharged I found my body pacing around and my mind writing menus with lots of meat. Though, tempted to eat some of that roadkill deer, when we were putting her in the freezer, we were faced with quite a few animals that came before her and should be used first. I grabbed a leg of mutton, which you may remember from our friend Steve Bartlett’s sheep in There Will Probably Be Fish and immediately started salivating. The problem with cooking what both your body and mind really want sometimes, though, is that most cooking happens inside, while standing rather still, and when I try to imagine what I would actually want for my last meal, it’d probably be a walk. I went outside and lit a fire and found the sweet spot.

I took great inspiration for the sauce and method here. Plus, very cute doggy.

Next to the mutton, I pan-roasted matsutakes and shungiku greens from the garden in bear fat.

We chewed slowly, with our eyes closed and thought maybe we’d gone to heaven, UNTIL! About 10PM and the sweet tooth showed up and we said fuck it, we’re adults and we’re alive, we can eat cookies whenever we want, let’s double team it.