I spent Easter Monday – el Dia de la Mona, as it’s known here in Catalonia – in a semi-rural part of the Penedès region. The festival long ago started as the day when godparents gave their godchildren a special round cake surrounded with hard-boil eggs, the total number of eggs amounting to the godchild’s age. These days, the tradition has morphed more into a gathering of friends and a grand excuse to barbeque lamb chops and all sorts of sausages. Of course, there’s still a cake but the hard-boiled eggs, thankfully, have evolved into a giant chocolate egg, or some other elaborate chocolate concoction, much like what’s typical this time of year in the U.S.
While all that was fun, the highlight was the education I got from spending the day on a half-farm, half-weekend-getaway house out in the country. The guy who “owns” this makeshift sort-of squatter’s plot, the brother of a friend of a friend, shared a wealth of information I’ll never use again, but that I’ll likely treasure for the foreseeable future. He told us in half-Catalan and half in heavily-accented Andalusian-style Castillian Spanish, that in order for a male kiwi tree to bear fruit, there must be at least two female kiwi trees nearby to help with, what I guess the English word would be, pollination. And who knew kiwis could even grow in the Mediterranean? I thought they only grew in New Zealand… Goes to show what I know. Here’s sort of another fascinating but probably gross tidbit, did you know that when a chicken has trouble passing an egg, if you rub a little bit of olive oil in her “passageway,” the egg will slip right out? You didn’t know? Me neither. Then, he showed us the mini-rabbit farm where he raises and slaughters a few dozen rabbits that eventually are sold to the local butcher and end up in someone’s roasting pan in the oven. In their prime, which usually last about 10 months, female rabbits can birth 12-14 bunnies at a time. To boot, they can do this every 30 days!!!!! Over a few months the number of bunnies they spit out declines, but still can you imagine mama rabbit’s experience?!? Good grief!
I won’t go into much detail about watching the guy and his brother slitting the throat of one of the cute furry animals and skinning him right there behind the house. You probably don’t need to know what the sound of bunny death sounded like either, nor do I want to write about it here. I will share this last gem with you – rabbit blood and rabbit liver can be fried up for a tasty treat. I’m pretty certain you’ll never see a spoonful of bunny blood passing my lips, but I pass along the info in case one day you have the opportunity to try it.