In which Rebekah discovers that predecoupee does not mean "precut", but rather "before being cut up"

***WARNING: Potentially gross story***

When in Rome, do as the Romans. When in France, eat as the French. Since it's far easier to find French ingredients than say, Mexican ingredients at the grocery, this becomes almost a necessity if you don't want to spend half your life hunting down odd ingredients or trying to convince yourself that bell peppers really are an acceptable substitute for serranos.

Before we came to Paris last time, we bought at cookbook called Bistro Cooking by Patricia Wells, and I cooked from it almost exclusively during the two months we were here. During that time I made all of the stews, all of the unbaked chicken dishes (we had no oven), and even the duck dish. I also made the 3 rabbit dishes, substituting chicken for the rabbit. I decided while selecting a recipe for yesterday's dinner that I was not going to wimp out this year. If the recipe called for rabbit, I was going to buy a rabbit. I also decided that since none of my knives was any good for butcher work (it took my 30 minutes to quarter a chicken last week) that I was going to buy a rabbit that was already cut into pieces.

Off I went to the Auchan with my shopping list: a rabbit, green olives, noodles, and a few other things. First to find the rabbits, or lapins in French. That wasn't a problem, they were over by the chickens. Next I needed to pick one. Keeping in mind that I wanted a whole rabbit that was already cut up and also that I didn't care if it had been free range or anything like that, I selected a pink container labelled "lapin, entier--predecoupee", picked up the rest of my stuff and headed on my merry way.

Around 5:00 last night I headed back to prepare dinner. First I chopped the onions and cut up the tomatoes so that they would be ready to go into the pot once the rabbit pieces were browned. Then I grabbed the salt and pepper, put olive oil into the pan for browning, and ripped open the package. The rabbit seems to have been cut into very large pieces. And what's that? The round thing. Could it be. . . an eye? And were those tufts of fur I was seeing?

Into the office. "Hon, it has an eye." Blaise grabs the camera and I pull the rabbit out of the package. Someone has kindly cut the ears off and cut the rabbit halfway in two at the waist, so it can be folded into the styrofoam.

"Do you have to clean out the guts?" I check. No, the liver and kidneys and heart are all there (ugh) but the stomach, intestines and lungs seem to be missing. Good; if the entrails were there the rabbit would have gone in the trash. Now, the initial photos of the rabbit having been taken, I have to cut the thing into pieces that will fit into my pan. First to go, the head. The side facing up has an eye. The side facing down into the package lacks one. Somehow this is disturbing. Blaise tells me to pretend I'm in high school biology. In my biology class we dissected starfish. This is definitely no starfish. I finish hacking the head off and throw it in the trash. Probably French chefs would use it to make rabbit stock. I'm no French chef.

Now it has much the same general anatomy as a chicken. Cut off the back legs and attached thighs. Separate and cut off the much smaller front legs. There is some meat along the backbone that also needs to come off. Throw away the rest of the rib cage (since I'm not a French chef, remember?).

Finally I'm ready to actually cook. Brown the meat in the olive oil. Set it aside and brown the onion in the remaining oil. Then add wine, tomato, bay leaves, and the rabbit pieces and cover. It's time to take a look at the pictures Blaise took and has downloaded to his computer. The rabbit had teeth. They're quite clear in the photos, though I didn't notice them at the time.

Once dinner is ready Blaise and I carefully cut the meat from the bones, lest Sapphire and Ezio notice that the drumstick and thigh seem to be awfully oddly shaped. Cherry loves it. Sapphire and Ezio aren't so sure. Afterwards, Blaise shows them the photos.