Not even the Chinese. Now, hold on.. before you get all upset with me for stereotyping, I got that comment from my personal banker at CIBC who’s Chinese-Canadian. In fact, what she said was:
“We (the Chinese) eat nearly anything that moves, but not crows. I wonder why that is? Maybe because they’re black or maybe they’re unlucky.”
Which got me thinking. Does anyone eat crows?
Crows aren’t poisonous, and some look plump enough, so there’s nothing stopping us from a bucket of original-spiced Kentucky Fried Crow. True, they’re black and more than a little sinister so perhaps that deters people. But at least one academic source says they taste fine; all dark meat and a bit gamey, perhaps like duck or goose, but fine. And a handful of hunting and survivalist websites all carry the same short list of recipes for cooking crow, usually involving teriyaki sauce and small, reddish medallions of crow breast meat.
In old times, it was seen as distasteful to eat them because they are by nature scavengers, often feeding on the corpses of soldiers left to rot on the battlefield. Thus, it was considered “naturally humiliating if forced to consume crow against one’s will” which might explain the origin of the expression “eating crow”.
Much later, in the 1930s the good citizens of Oklahoma went through a phase of eating crows. They were led happily to the table by Dr. T. W. Stallings who hated the birds with a passion. Stallings cooked them with lard and celery, smothered in gravy, and got people interested by disguising them as quail, moreover stating with confidence that they were a good source of protein and rich in Vitamin B. Depression-era farmers in Oklahoma didn’t need much persuading: remove a field-robbing pest and tap into a new food source.
Even today, a restaurant in Sweden serves fresh spring crow every April 4th. They’re fully booked up to a year in advance.
Me, I fall into the “crows-look-nasty-to-eat” camp, plus I like them. When they look at you there’s something behind the eyes that’s full of intelligence. Unlike pheasants or pigeon or grouse, which look dumb as planks and will always have a place on my table. And the Chinese eat them too.
