Moose Pâté

Brand: Hissa

Found at: Karlstad Christmas Market

I have no problem with eating moose. Moose are grumpy animals who will trample you as soon as look at you. Not only will a moose crush you to death if you hit one with your car, but I firmly believe that they take great pleasure in doing so. Moose are the hockey players if the animal world – quick to fight and surprisingly agile on the ice. And like hockey players, they do not like me and so I have taken the liberty of not liking them in return.

So, I relish the chance to score a point for team humanity and eat one. (Moose, that is, not hockey players.) Though I have to admit, that there is nothing particularly special about moose liver pâté. It’s tasty, but there’s nothing uniquely moose-y about it. Mixed with cream and bacon, the moose liver tastes a lot like all other livers. And I find this a little disappointing. I wanted to taste the stark and wild Nordic landscape and the ill-tempered stupidity of these massive forest jerks. I wanted to know that I had taken away the life and liberty of one of God’s most cantankerous creatures – and if possible, I wanted to know that it knew. If I could look the spirit of this fallen moose in the eye as I ate this liver pâté, I absolutely would. I would even pay extra to do so.

Call me cruel and mean-spirited to the natural world, but when I am one day trampled to death by an angry, surprised, or merely confused member of the deer family, know that I at least died doing what I love: calling it a sandwich filling.