Muskrat love? It's a Lent thing for downriver area
Kristin Lukowski of The Michigan Catholic
Published March 9, 2007
Kristin Lukowski | The Michigan Catholic
Muskrat tastes the same as duck, says wild game chef Johnny Kolakowski — both animals live in the water and have the same diet. Kolakowski serves up muskrat at his Riverview restaurant, Kola's Food Factory. | Riverview — There's another culinary option for Catholics abstaining from meat on Fridays during Lent — for the adventuresome and traditionalists only.
The custom of eating muskrat on Ash Wednesday and Fridays during Lent apparently goes back to the early 1800s, the time of Fr. Gabriel Richard, and when he was ministering to trappers. Legend has it that because trappers and their families were going hungry not eating flesh during Lent, he allowed them to eat muskrat, with the reasoning that the mammal lives in the water. The story varies on just where the dispensation extends; along the River Raisin, along the River Rouge, all of southeast Michigan and Monroe County are among the areas mentioned.
The Archdiocese of Detroit's communications department said there is a standing dispensation for Catholics downriver to eat muskrat on Fridays, although no documentation of the original dispensation could be found. However, a 2002 archdiocesan document on Lenten observances, in addition to outlining the laws of fasting and abstinence, explains that "there is a long-standing permission — dating back to our missionary origins in the 1700s — to permit the consumption of muskrat on days of abstinence, including Fridays of Lent."
|
Muskrat Facts
Size: Body about a foot long, tail almost as long; weighs about 3 pounds.
Lives: Lakes, rivers, ponds and marshes across the United States, including Alaska, and Canada.
Diet: Mostly water vegetation, but also small turtles, frogs and salamanders.
Aquatic ability: Waterproof fur, and can stay submerged for up to 17 minutes.
Offspring: Breeding season spring through fall. May have several litters, usually 5-6 young, per season. | Although the prospect of eating muskrat might be less than appetizing to some, to many people downriver it's a way of Lenten life — and dinners.
St. Charles Borromeo Parish in Newport holds a muskrat dinner every year to raise funds for the parish's youth sports teams. The early February dinner includes sides of creamed corn and mashed potatoes, features prizes donated by local merchants — and serves up several hundred dinners.
Bill "Pip" Chinavare, of Newport, was president of the sports club for 29 years and still heads up the muskrat fundraiser. His wife, Candy, said women don't eat many of the dinners.
"This is a men's thing," she said. "They pack the men in."
The fundraiser dinners have been going on for a long time, she said, probably at least the 41 years she and her husband have been married. The muskrats come from a local trapper.
Candy Chinavare tried muskrat once, and said it was "OK." "The majority of women can't get past the 'rat' thing," she said.
Fr. Russ Kohler, pastor at Most Holy Trinity Parish in Detroit and downriver native, is a regular at the St. Charles Borromeo muskrat dinners. He said the trick to making the muskrat edible is in the marinade, a secret recipe based off a French liqueur.
David Kenyon | Michigan DNR
Muskrats are found in Michigan swamps, rivers and ponds. |
Kristin Lukowski |The Michigan Catholic
At Kola's Food Factory, a Riverview restaurant, a muskrat dinner comes with kraut and mashed potatoes and gravy. | Growing up, he didn't know about the dispensation to eat muskrat and only tried it when he was filling in at St. Charles years later. He's tried to make the dinner every year since then.
"I didn't fall in love with the product until I could drink beer," he joked.
He said muskrat has the consistency of chicken, but with a "unique" taste.
Johnny Kolakowski, of Riverview's Kola's Food Factory, has been eating muskrat since he was a kid. When he opened up his restaurant years ago, he put muskrat on the menu.
He can sell several dozen muskrat dinners on a Friday, but they were more popular back in the 1980s, when he would sell 150 a night. The tradition's less popular with the younger crowd, but it's not uncommon for young men to come in — with their cameras — and order a muskrat dinner.
Kolakowski, 59, a member of St. Stanislaus Kostka Parish in Wyandotte, said muskrat tastes the same as duck. Both animals live in the water and have the same diet — the only difference is one walks and one flies, he said.
He cooks more traditional foods too, such as "to-die-for" pierogi, but he's been cooking wildlife for 30 years. "I'm an expert," he said. "My job is to make everything palatable."
His muskrats come from a trapper in Canada, and they're sautéed in butter and garlic, and served with sides of sauerkraut and mashed potatoes and gravy. The best part of a muskrat is the hind legs, he said.
His favorite game dinners are moose and elk, but there's not an animal he doesn't like: "All God's creatures belong next to my garlic mashed potatoes," he said.
Kolakowski's zeal for muskrat isn't shared by everyone downriver, however. Reaction was mixed at several downriver parish offices when asked if they eat muskrat or know anyone who does: "Ewww!" one man exclaimed. Others laughed; most said they would not want to try it.
A 1987 Michigan Catholic column by Lansing Bishop Kenneth Povish addressed that issue, writing that according to a Detroit Archdiocese spokesperson, "no dispensation was ever given to allow Catholics to eat muskrat on Fridays." He referred to what he called the "Great Interdiocesan Doctrinal Debate" of 1956, during which he determined that although muskrat is a warm-blooded mammal and technically flesh, the custom had been so long held along Michigan's rivers and marshes that it was "immemorial custom," thus allowed by Canon Law.
For the record, Bishop Povish didn't much care for a muskrat dinner. He wrote in 1987 that "anyone who could eat muskrat was doing penance worthy of the greatest of the saints."
Related Articles:
|
